Money for Grass

Rip It Up, Issue 236, 1 April 1997, Page 24

Money for Grass

An Interview with Supergrass 9 Mick Quinn

It’s just after nine o’clock in the morning in London, and Supergrass bass guitarist Mick Quinn has just got up after a late, hard night doing a video for ‘Richard lII’ — a single from their sizzling new album, In It For the Money.

It’s quite a little dark number, so there’s some evil shots in the

video,” explains Quinn. “I don’t think they’ll be playing it on daytime kids’ television,” he adds with a laugh. So, why choose ‘Richard lII’ as a single before some of the more typically summery Supergrass fare that still exists (although in dwindling presence) on the new album? “We’d been away a long time from England in terms of being in the charts and press, and we felt we wanted to come back with something powerful, something that was a slap in the face, and that was the one we felt strongest about when we started

recording.” While Mick is the product of Australian parents living in England, his grandparents and brothers live in Australia, and he spent nine months there when he was 18, he hadn’t taken the trip across the Tasman until this year’s Big Day Out. “It was great, I was pretty impressed. We were on about two o’clock, and were finished by three, so we got to drink DB and watch the rest of the bands. We were only there for a day and a bit, and I was expecting Auckland to be a bit like Tasmania, but there was obviously a lot more happening in Auckland.

“We’d like to do a club tour of New Zealand, as after the Big Day Out we did a club show in Sydney and it was loads better, as people are coming to see just you and you can basically play on your own terms.” Idle chat aside, the reason for this interview is the aforementioned second Supergrass album. In its formative stages one of its titles was Second Album Trauma.

“We had about 10 different working titles. Must Have a Leak was a good front runner, but we settled on In It For the Money after a four-hour discussion late at night, as we had to tell the record company the next day, as they had all these Xerox machines waiting to run with the title. It’s not a bad title, although it’s not as interesting as it could’ve been.”

“No, we try to be as natural as possible. When we did stuff like ‘Alright’ we were taking the piss at the same time. But, because it did so well, you’ve got to move on and do something different. We try not to manipulate it too badly. When we write a song we try to create an image or a video that sums up that song and makes that mood.”

In It For the Money was recorded in Cornwall using the same engineer and location that worked for I Should Coco.

And not as original as it could’ve been — paraphrasing, as it does, the title of Frank Zappa’s late 60s hippie satire album, We’re Only In It For the Money. But the new Supergrass album isn’t about satire, although it does say something about their healthily cynical attitude to pop culture — a cynicism surprising in ones so young.

“We record down there because we like to use the same engineer, John Cornfield. He’s a really top guy and we haven’t found anyone who’s bettered him yet. And it’s really quiet down there, as there’s no roads into the studio. You get loads of work done, and on the new album we had enough time to try a few mad ideas to get different sounds. We set the band on the lawn outside the studio, and we tried a few songs outside like a festival. It was really good fun.” No question, In It For the Money is going to get raved about. Supergrass have yet to put a foot wrong with the press.

“It’s not that we’ve suddenly become a cynical band on this album, as some of the songs are quite old and we’re not that young, as we’ve been playing in bands for a long time. This album may be cynical in some respects, but we’ll probably do something completely different for the next album.”

“We’re lining up for a good backlash in the English press at some point, and hopefully the world will follow suit, so we’ll have something to fight against, which will be quite nice. We have had good press, but we don’t tread on people’s toes.” And they’re still the unaffected boys next door.

The new album will be called ‘more mature’, because their songs have become denser, more durable, imaginative and even more tuneful. Was their a conscious decision to avoid the urchin pop of I Should Coco?

“Success doesn’t interest us, we’re more interested in being in the band. If it’s not really important to you then it’s not going to mess your head up. I think we’re just boring, really.”