What Went Wrong Supergroove

Rip It Up, Issue 237, 1 May 1997, Page 16

What Went Wrong Supergroove

Karl Steven sits at the table in the lounge of his Ponsonby flat, drinking tea and chain smoking, looking out over a view that takes in a slice of the Auckland waterfront, the lion’s share of the central business district, and the recently completed Sky Tower. He’s dressed from head to toe in black, the trademark uniform of his former band Supergroove, whom he walked out on in October, and whose remaining members announced the demise of the band last month.

For the past six months, Supergroove have sat in limbo, and while they and their record company (BMG) have stayed strangely silent on the existence of Supergroove as a recording and touring band, it has been common knowledge within the music industry that Steven’s dramatic departure spelled the end of the group. In September last year, Supergroove commenced a month-long promotional tour of New Zealand, showing off their second record, Backspaces the follow-up to the phenomenally successful (70,000 local sales) Traction album. Immediately following the NZ jaunt, the band flew across the Tasman to launch the album at an industry gathering in Sydney, organised by BMG Australia, whom Steven says “were pretty vocal about their dislike of the new album”. Hours before Supergroove were due to perform at the function, Steven told the other members of the group he was quitting. The next day the band cancelled their Australian tour and returned home, their future plans in doubt. On the eve of the release of Backspaces Steven told RipltUp', “\Ne are so 100 percent confident about it... if a band all love their new album, they’re doing something right.” So what went wrong? “All I know is why I left, and it certainly wasn’t because things turned sour, it was because things were about to. What happened in the space of that month was, Joe [Lonie, bass] and I realised the problems we were having with touring and the whole band life, they weren’t from the music. On that small New Zealand tour, I was starting to think, ‘We’re doing the music we like now, but there’s other things I don’t like about being in the band’.” Were the problems musical or personal? “It was nothing to do with the music or the reaction to it. By things turning sour, I mean I couldn’t have continued being in a touring band, the days in the van, the soundchecks and all that stuff. If I had done it for any longer I would have started to get bitter and twisted about it; ‘Another day of my life wasted sitting in a van,’ it was starting to get like that.” Why did you not call it quits before travelling to Australia? “I thought I’d just see out at least that leg of the tour, because it was all organised and in place, I thought it was the professional thing to see it through. But then it came to the night of the first show, it was a record company gig, and it’s always pretty bad playing to the music industry, but it’s particularly bad when you already know what they think of the music — they didn’t even want to release the new album.”

What happened that night? “It was at souncheck that I ‘spat the

dummy’, though I didn’t have a nervous breakdown. That day I had a long chat with Joe about all the stuff that was going on, and I decided, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna do it, this is the right thing to do.’ At that soundcheck, the Divinyls were playing, and I was looking at them and I was thinking, ‘Do I really want to be one of these people, and spend the rest of my life doing soundchecks and doing gigs,’ and I couldn’t think of one good reason to go on and do the show except that it was the professional thing to do, but that just didn’t matter. It took me a long time to realise — it

took me until that soundcheck — that I don’t like doing this at all, that my heart is completely gone from this. It shouldn’t be that way ’cause you’re fooling yourself, it’s grim for everyone involved. ” «

What was the reaction from the rest of the band?

“lan [Jones, drums] said, Tve seen it coming, you hadn’t been very happy on the last part of the New Zealand tour,’ and I had no idea, I thought I seemed perfectly happy. Everyone basically said, ‘We kind of saw it coming,’ and I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that I was going to do this crazy thing.’ There was disappointment and, apart from me, everyone felt a bit dazed and confused.” How did BMG Australia take the news? “They were very<|Dissed off because their big party wasn’t so much fun anymore. The company’s official reaction was, ‘Oh well, fuck them. They won’t pucker up so we won’t bend over.’” Was there any suggestion of the band continuing without you? “They tossed up the idea of going on without me, but it’s a bit of a stretch. The record company wasn’t sure how the public would react, because on the New Zealand tour, every one of the guys in the band apart from me was asked if they were new members. So, basically, it would have been these bunch of guys calling themselves Supergroove, playing entirely different music, with, as far as a lot of the public were concerned, none of the original members — it wasn’t very feasible.” On the New Zealand promo trip, what was the response from the public to the new album?

“The reaction was basically the same everywhere: at least one or two people would come up to us and say they loved the new stuff, the rest just walked off confused.”

Did that batter your self-confidence? “We knew all that was going to happen. What shook me up the most was, I realised on that tour, for the first time ever while performing, I really did not care what they thought. We had a great deal to prove on that tour, but I just didn’t care what a bunch of strangers thought about this album that was so important to me.

Most people don’t have their lives put on a pedestal in front of complete strangers, and that’s exactly what this album was, our lives. It did not bother me that they didn’t like it.”

The album garnered a lot of criticism over the vocal performances on it. How did you react to that? “This is out of most people’s orbit, but the thing with the vocals, it was all about honesty, the whole album. People have said it sounds thin and weedy and young, and kind of under-confident — that’s

exactly the point. We didn’t want to coat the pill, we wanted it to be this reality of what we were like, and that’s what we are like. If people don’t like that, that’s fine, I understand, because when you put on an album there’s certain things you expect, one of those things from a white rock band is plenty of guitars, big fat drums, and a confident, slightly rugged vocal delivery, and that is everything we are not.” When you were making Backspacer, did you feel under pressure to attempt to repeat the commercial success of Traction? “As soon as we got into writing the new album, we weren’t thinking about that, we were thinking, ‘Let’s take this opportunity to make a piece of art we are heppy with.’ I can’t speak for everyone else, but at least for Joe and I, it was about seeing what we were capable of.” Do you still have 100 percent confidence in the album? “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to change anything. It’s a pretty potent album, if you don’t like it, you really don’t like it, people I’ve spoken to are not ambivalent towards it. There’s very few people who really like it, but for those people, it’s quite a dear thing to them.” In a recent issue of Auckland magazine Music Press, founding member of Supergroove Che Ness, who left the band in January 1996, revealed he was unhappy with the circumstances surrounding his departure. What did you make of Che’s accusation that he was pushed from the band? “He sounds very angry, I didn’t realise he was so angry. In that article he talks as

if he really wanted to remain in the group; I can’t think of it in that way mainly because the music couldn’t not change, and it does suprise me that Che looks at it as if there was a way we could have continued as a unit. I wouldn’t say we kicked Che out; we tried some of the new songs with Che and he was dissatisfied and we were dissatisfied, it was just a difference in musical direction, that’s why I still see it as more or less a mutual thing.” With 70,000 sales of Traction in New Zealand, is there a big financial return for the band personally? “Not personally, no. We were doing a lot of promotion and touring — we toured the whole world — that costs a lot of money and that had to be recouped from somewhere, and it was those album sales that recouped it. Out of actual record sales, we made very little compared to the amount ■ the record company made out of it, but that’s just the way it works, we didn’t have a problem with that. I think the record company broke even at the end of the day, but Supergroove has a few debts — we certainly didn’t walk out of it with a big profit.” Is there a perception amongst the public that if you’re selling that many records you’re wealthy? “Absolutely. In small towns, the number of kids that come up to you and say, ‘you’re rich, give me your sunglasses...’ People think if you’ve got a Number 1 single you’re rolling in it, because of the wealth that is normally associated with fame; but of course in a country as small as New Zealand it’s pretty easy to be famous, but it’s hard to be rich.” What’s your single most enjoyable Supergroove memory? “I was thinking about it last night... The whole thing is nothing but good memories — even the worst times, I look back on fondly. Yeah, I had some horrible days in vans and some miserable nights in hotel rooms, but because I’m not still doing it, I can chalk it up to character building, and I can be quite nostalgic and romantic about the whole experience. It’s just all really nice to think about.”

JOHN RUSSELL