The Vaccines: the music that inspired them, album by album
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Version 0 of 1. What Did You Expect From the Vaccines? (2011) Jonathan Richman – I, JonathanPeople pick up on the Ramones and the Jesus and Mary Chain in our sound, but Jonathan Richman is someone else who was playing simple, classic, 50s rock’n’roll in his own way. I wasn’t really a big fan before, but I was told to listen to him by someone who had seen a couple of similarities. It legitimised to me the way I was writing songs: he was relying on three chords and melodies we’ve all heard a million times. Party in the USA sounds like something from the Grease soundtrack, but it’s incredibly pure, naive, direct and fun. Lyrically, too, there’s a no-bullshit thing, but there’s also an escapism in all the references to California. The early demos of our first record sound very similar to his songs, because I wrote them all on an acoustic guitar at the end of my bed – though they obviously didn’t end up sounding that way. We never set out to be the most dangerous or unpredictable band – that’s not who we are – and people might be disappointed when they look for that in us. The Descendents – Milo Goes to CollegeThis is an embodiment of my love of punk and hardcore. People say it was the first pop-punk record – it’s a punk record about love and love lost with no social or political agenda. It’s a very selfish record about heartbreak. It’s fast, energetic, angry and exciting, and it’s got great songs. Until I heard that record, I’d never heard punk that was so vulnerable, and that really influenced the way I would dress up the sentiments in my songs: I could sing “If you wanna come back it’s all right,” but sing it at 100 miles an hour. The difference is that we’re not bratty – our first album sounds vulnerable, like we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, whereas the Descendents sound like a kick in the teeth. Related: The Vaccines – English Graffiti: exclusive album stream I saw All, who formed after the Descendents spilt, in Finsbury Park in 2003; it was one of the first shows I ever saw. I had an All T-shirt and they all signed it. They were the Descendents, but not quite as good. When I was 13, I became friends with a group of people who were all vegans and all played in local hardcore bands. One of these people made me a tape. On one side it had DC hardcore and on the other it had New York hardcore, and it was one of the most exciting things I’d ever heard. Hardcore became massively important to me – I put on shows, I went on animal rights marches, and it became my identity for a period of time. The only difference between good and bad punk rock is conviction and self-belief – it’s not about playing, it’s about feeling. I felt I learned a lot from that. The Beach Boys – California GirlsThe Beach Boys were massive to me at that time. When we made our first record, every American indie act was drenched in reverb, and most of it you could plot back to the Beach Boys. I was seduced by all of that. I love how a record with so much sonic depth has a melody that just rises to the surface. But whereas those American groups were often looking at the Beach Boys of the late 60s and early 70s, we were going back to 1964 and 1965. I like the sonics, but I like the earlier stuff for its sonics and songcraft – and for feeling aspirational. Those songs about surfers in California feel like something to aspire to more than drinkers in Camden. When we first started rehearsing, I was playing a 60s surf organ and drenching my vocals in reverb and singing about California. The way we dressed in the early days, with the cap-sleeved shirts, was as if we were a Californian frat band, too. We’ve never been indie – we didn’t come up through a scene, or with an ethos. We signed to Columbia after two or three shows. From day one, we wanted to be a big band, and I think that’s one of the reasons we have so many detractors. There was no one saying, “Hang on, these guys have earned their stripes; we’ve played with them in bars every Friday for the last five years.” We felt like outsiders who other artists and journalists couldn’t relate to. Nowadays, I’m at ease with that. The more people hear your band, the more people are going to be snotty about it. The Vaccines Come of Age (2012) Gene Clark – No Other[Producer] Ethan Johns banned us from listening to other music. He told us: “You need an identity of your own – I’m fed up of you referencing 10 songs a track. Just stop listening to stuff until the songs are written.” There are certain qualities Ethan brings, which are organic and natural, and I’m pretty sure he introduced us to this, which Freddie [Cowan, guitar and vocals] in particular took a lot from. It’s so musical, and that’s something Ethan wanted – he helped us to become better players. No Other is simple but it’s musical. It’s sexy and it’s dynamic. Our second record was more dynamic and nuanced, too – we didn’t want to make the same album again. And although I think, in retrospect, we ended up doing just that, we did come out of it with better chops and a better understanding of dynamics and how to make a record sound good. On the first record, we wanted things to sound murky and undistinguishable, but this was about getting perfect sound. This album was pretty much recorded live – really, we’d spend 10 hours a day finding a sound and then one hour a day recording it. Big Star – #1 RecordIt’s one of those records that you know was recorded live, and it has such a sense of dynamics. I must have listened to The Ballad of El Goodo 200 times while we were making the record, and then straight after that you’ve got In the Street, so it’s not one-dimensional in terms of songs. When I listen to that album, I feel as if you can see sparks flying off the guitars. There were more obvious examples of live sounding bands, but they were either punk rock or muso, whereas Big Star is great rock’n’roll. The Clash – Spanish BombsI don’t write much about anything apart from love and love lost, so I don’t know why I came to that song. But particularly with our second record, we looked at all these great British bands – Blur, the Kinks, the Clash – that kept evolving and kept writing great songs. The Clash is such an obvious reference because it’s poppy, it’s energetic and it’s explicitly looking back to classic rock. But at the same time, they also looked forward: if you take Combat Rock, that’s really innovative. That’s the big difference between album two and album three: on album two we would try to recreate a song from Combat Rock, whereas on album three, we would ask: “Why are we looking back 30 years to a band who are trying to be innovative?” That shift in our ethos was a massive thing, but back then I was really attracted to the songs and the energy and what the Clash represented. We used to watch a lot of film of them, and a friend of ours emailed me and Freddie the other day with a link to Clash live footage and the note: “Have you been studying this?” Freddie just replied: “Yes.” English Graffiti (2015) Arthur Russell – I Couldn’t Say It to Your FaceThere has been a really big shift in our ethos. We always wanted to be a good band, but we never thought about being an important band. Whether or not this record will achieve that for us, I don’t know. We wanted to break down our own framework and self-imposed restrictions, because rock has never been more unfashionable: it’s now the music of our parents. A lot of that is rock’s own fault. At one time it was rebellious and anarchic and exciting and uncharted. Now it’s just a framework to stick to, and it’s the same one our parents stuck to when they were making rock music. We were really aware of that, and we thought that if you want to be important, you need to be singing about what’s important, thinking about what’s important, working with important young producers, making sounds that haven’t been made before. You want to be of a time rather than timeless. Whether or not it was futile, that was what all our efforts went towards. I Couldn’t Say It to Your Face is actually slightly more conventional than some Arthur Russell music, but he has an amazing balance of being innovative and important and writing classic songs. He’s so intimate, and I just love him. His work is so moving, and that fact that he’s innovative in no way detracts from the songs. That’s an issue I have with a lot of music – I like songs, and I find it hard to connect with a lot of noise. We worked with [LA producer] Cole MGN on this record, and he had a band called the Samps, which was all sampled based. He’s supremely talented, and it’s not song-based, but I was very drawn to his approach. It felt very vital. He’s the same age as me, so he’s not a father figure, but he had all this wizardry that I didn’t have. I wrote a lot of the record with him – I felt like he had everything I wanted, and it was a really fruitful collaboration. Gorillaz – On Melancholy HillIt’s not the most innovative of their songs, but it’s my favourite. Damon Albarn makes it work with such brilliance and conviction, bringing so many different elements to bear, which in itself is such an example of modernity: there are no barriers; it’s a real iPod-generation project. That’s the way music has gone now, but even in 2010 it felt new. None of the experimentalism ever got in the way of the songs. Shin Jung Hyun – Beautiful LadyWe sampled the riff – it’s worthy of any rock god, but he’s only been heard by a handful of people. It didn’t end up making it on to the record, but I thought more people needed to hear it. World music is a very patronising term, but he makes western guitar music with a Korean twist, and this was definitely a record where we tried to break barriers, too. I love this song, and I love what it represents – it’s just a shame the best version isn’t available on YouTube. I admit our output is more route-one than our tastes, but the notion that we’re meat-and-potatoes rock is wrong: there’s a lot more esoteric stuff we’ve made that will never see the light of day because it doesn’t fit the idea of the Vaccines as a consciously refined thing. I think people would be really surprised if they heard some of this music – Pete [Robertson, drums and vocals], Freddie and I spent a week with the DJ Paul White and came up with a whole record that borders on jazz. The last 18 months were a period of exploration in which we made a lot of turnings that took us further than many people would believe. Also, meat and potatoes can mean a really good steak with truffle-infused fries, not just something grey and boiled. |