THE FRAME
Lucy Brouwer interviews
HEFNER @ The Venue, Edinburgh
8th April 2000
Too Pure's finest purveyors of observational
and intimate pop morsels, Hefner, release 'Boxing Hefner' - a
compilation of
B-sides, sessions and rare tracks - on April 10th. It's their
answer to the Smiths' 'Hatful of Hollow,' containing many of
their songs that have until now been fetching silly prices on
hard to find vinyl. Hefner are John Peel favourites, making a
record number of appearances in the Festive Fifty at the end of
last year, and doing 5 sessions for him so far. I went to
Edinburgh to catch their first solo date after a month long European
tour supporting the Violent Femmes - who had
cancelled a planned Glasgow date to do something that only a few
years ago would have been considered the ultimate sell
out - a tour of South Africa sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Hefner like cigarettes though, and
have even written a hymn to them. They also like a drink. It was
a little early for that
when I arrived at the Venue, so I sat down with singer Darren
Hayman and multi - instrumental band member Jack Hayter
for a nice cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit...
For once someone has remembered to
put tea bags and a kettle on the rider, something that is often
overlooked as bands
are expected to want to pile straight into the Jack Daniel's and
Cokes as soon as they arrive. Sometimes though, you just
fancy a brew. They have, however, forgotten the milk, so once
we're all settled with black tea and Jack has handed round
the Crunchie bars he's found, we can start the interview. Hefner
have played in Scotland before - actually they have played
Glasgow twice, as well as recording their debut album 'Breaking
God's Heart' there in 1998. The Glasgow sessions were
pretty fruitful, not only comprising that album, but also some
of the tracks that have found their way on to the new release
'Boxing Hefner', Darren explained:
"When we recorded the first album,
I think we recorded something like 18 songs, maybe more.. and
10 went on the record
and a few made up the B-sides; but actually it was pretty hard
choosing the ten at the time, and I think quite a few people
still think we might have got it wrong."
There was plenty of material to choose
from for the compilation then, as each early single had 3 B-sides.
They needed a
nifty way round the chart regulations that limit only two extra
tracks:
"We tried to cheat it for a little bit. We tried to do a thing where we joined them together," says Darren.
"So when you put them on a CD they count as one track..." Jack explains.
"...So that we thought they'd
only count as a song, 3 songs but 2 of them joined together."
Darren continues, "I thought if
you tell me this is two songs I'll tell you that Bohemian Rhapsody
is ten: but somebody told us off!"
So this record is a bit of a compilist's dream then Darren?
"I think so, also I mean there
was those songs that were left over from the first album and we'd
released a record that was
only properly available in Spain; and then there was two singles
that we put out ourselves before we hooked up with Too
Pure which were pretty impossible to get actually. Even though
they were quite good songs, we didn't much like the
performance or recording, so those ones we redid. When you do
a little compilation album, or rarity album, its quite a good
chance to rewrite history a bit, being a bit economical with the
truth really."
*
Rumour has it that 'Twisting Mary's Arm', the song that usually
closes Hefner's live set, was recorded by popular demand,
as they had sworn that they'd never record it. This comes as news
to the band.
"I didn't realise that many people
knew.. the idea was originally that we'd have one song that we'd
never play live..." Darren
realises that he has got this back to front and corrects himself,
"...one song that we'd always play live...the songs people
like are the songs we never play live! That was the idea and it
was a good idea really and I dunno why we didn't stick to it."
Probably because fans can be very
demanding and always want to own complete collections of a band's
songs. Hefner
seem to inspire that kind of loyalty. The Edinburgh crowd knew
all the words to their favourites, including the closing
track. The idea that they should still have a song that they never
record appeals to Darren:
"To never record one song and
the song would always just exist on these [points to my Dictaphone].
If people end up with
a version of a song of their own, from one night they might get
a version where I break a string or one night where I forget
the words..."
Like most bands worth their salt these
days, Hefner have a comprehensive website with all the information
that anyone
could want, and a message board for fans to commune with each
other, and occasionally the band themselves. I wondered
if they had time to get involved with the site much themselves?
"Yeah as much as we can. We had
a website before which wasn't nearly as good and every now and
then somebody would
e-mail us saying 'You should let me do it, I could do it better',
and this one girl in particular was very persistent. So she's
just a fan. We said yes because she actually e-mailed us pages
of what the website could look like."
The site seems to project a continuous
visual image of the band, using the cartoons from their record
sleeves, stories and
photographs by the band members. Does it mean that you get to
control a little bit more how people see the band?
"I guess that's something we
try and do, not everywhere though. Some things we try and have
as far removed as possible,"
Darren says matter of factly, "Like for instance the videos.
Somebody outside the band does them, and both the directors
we've used for videos like working with us 'cause we normally
say 'do whatever you like'. It is quite fun almost to have
some areas of the band that you purposefully haven't got control
over. I never choose the singles either. I let the record
company do that. I figure they probably have a better idea what
makes a better single than I do, but I'm normally quite
particular about what the ten songs are on an album."
Following on from that, the website
would seem like a good place for fans, have Hefner got quite a
dedicated bunch of
people?
"It would seem when you look
at the e-mails, or go to a chat room that exists that there are
like 20 or 30 people who are
incredibly vociferous," Jack sensibly points out.
"I'm sure its the same with every band," Darren adds.
"I think every band must have somebody who thinks they're
the best
band in the world ever..." Jack concludes, " You have
to be careful that you don't assume that those are the only people
that
actually use the website."
There are a few diehard Hefner fans though, who travel long distances to see the live shows,
"There's people whose names we
know, because they come a lot... In America there was like people
travelling stupid
distances." says Darren.
The idea amuses Jack, "Flying to see Hefner!".
But later on, in the gig, it turns
out that one chap has driven 350 miles to be here and another
had come all the way from
Canada just for the show! It must feel strange to have people
who devote so much to liking a band. Darren pre-empts my
next question between sips of tea:
"I used to get a little bit like
'Oh this is weird', only 'cause I never did it. I know John (Morrison,
Bass) told me before that
he had a season ticket for Echo and the Bunnymen!"
Jack, who is the newest member of
the group, laughs in disbelief, but Darren continues:
"I've never done anything like that, but he kind of saw Echo
and the Bunnymen every date on a tour once.
It's funny though, sometimes you think that the people in the
bands don't love music as much as some fan."
You'd think it was those type of fans that would end up forming bands but they don't do they?
"Not generally, no." agrees Jack, "They just send you awful poetry in e-mails!"
Darren's got a more complex way of seeing it:
"That's not even that type of
fan. I think the type of fan that's done something creative, like
a fanzine writer, or who sends
you poetry or sends you tapes of their band is kind of like division
one; premier league, I don't think they do. It should be
that you see a band and you to do something yourself."
Jack remembers something, "Is it true that Belle and Sebastian have a league system?"
Apparently they have a chat room where
only the since-day-one-fans can hang out. It all gets a bit over
the top, a bit
precious.
Darren denies all knowledge of Belle
and Sebastian web sites and maintains that the only chat rooms
he frequents are
dedicated to Star Wars. Is this a big part of his life?!
"It is second to a few things like y'know, [he pauses for effect] women, and heroin!"
He's trying to talk up a rock'n'roll
lifestyle, but sorry, I don't believe him! He seems too knowledgeable
about the grading
system for visitors to Star Wars message boards. You have to earn
your title, from Apprentice through to Jedi Master
depending on how many times you visit. Darren doesn't tell me
what stage he's reached, but I reckon at least a Jedi Knight.
With these kinds of league tables in mind, what would be the criteria for finding the best Hefner fan?
"It shouldn't be based on anything
to do with the band, so it can't be based on anything fickle like
how many Hefner
records you've got or what do you know about the band... its gotta
be based on how much you get per annum, how much
do you weigh, how high are you?"
I think he means how tall, in which
case a lot of tonight's audience are in the running - for some
reason Edinburgh's
Indie-loving students all seem to be at least six feet - and that's
just the girls.
All the members of Hefner except for
Darren have other bands that they play in and record their own
songs - it's becoming
quite an empire. Hefner though, has up to now been a platform
for Darren's songs alone. Was this always the plan?
"Its not like its ever been set
down as a rule. It seems to turn out that it works that way. I
wouldn't even necessarily say that
its a simple thing to say that I lead the band or anything like
that. There's a song on the next record that all four of us
wrote. So I can imagine there being more of that gradually."
Again Belle and Sebastian come into
the conversation, and I'd sworn that I wouldn't mention them,
but Darren sees his own
parallels:
"I was a little bit conscious
of that thing where Belle and Sebastian suddenly got everybody
writing a song, firstly they all
sounded like his [Stuart Murdoch - who worked with Hefner on their
first album] but not as good. Why didn't he go 'Oi!
you're copying me, it sounds like mine! Stop it!' That's how I'd
do it...That's the funny thing when you introduce a new
writer in a band. There's a sound set how people like it, so I
can imagine it must have been: what if some of them had come
in from the opposite extreme, 'Well Stuart I've kind of got something
better...' 'Oh aye?' [he does the soft Glasgow accent
rather too well!] 'It sounds a bit like Goldie, sounds a bit drum
and bass...' I can imagine it would be a problem."
I tell Darren that B&S's new stuff
apparently sounds a lot bigger than their previous work. I used
to work in a record shop
in the West End and they used to come in and buy a lot of JB's
records and Northern Soul. Someone who's heard their
new song says it sounds like Funkadelic. Darren has his own opinions:
"The song I really like that
they did was Lazy Line Painter Jane. Which is not at all a soft
sounding song, quite a hard
sounding song. Maybe that's what somebody means, maybe its more
like that. I read an interview once. One of them was
like saying, 'Oh we feel like when we're playing we feel like
Booker T and the MGs', on that song they are but never
anywhere else... that song's really good actually."
Has Darren got a favourite amongst his own songs when Hefner are playing live?
"I think my favourite song to play is my favourite song actually, which is, Don't Flake Out On Me."
A self confessed homage to that great
1980s Peter Gabriel/ Kate Bush duet 'Don't Give Up', only with
three parts, from
second Hefner album The Fidelity Wars.
"I sing my bit, Anthony sings
his part as he does on the record, and Jack sings Gina's part,
the girl's part."
"Its a pale, pale shadow," Jack insists.
"Its quite good when we're travelling," adds Darren,
"Jack always tries to make an effort to sing it in the local
language..."
"It only works in France..."
"...but they love to hear you even try to get the accent
right!"
With over three album's worth of material
already, and a huge number of Radio One sessions in just over
two years - now
neatly packaged on Boxing Hefner -should we expect new material
on the next Hefner record?
"There's just so many songs that
we had when we went to do Breaking God's Heart it was ridiculous.
It would have been
foolhardy but we could have done a triple album as our first album,
which would have been stupid. I was writing songs for
years and years before I figured about even getting on stage.
The next Hefner album which is going to be released in
September hopefully is gonna have 11 songs that were written in
the last year so that's quite fun for us."
A final thought, will there be any
more Hymns? So far Hefner's hymns have been dedicated to Alcohol,
Cigarettes, Coffee
and 'the things we didn't do' amongst other things.
"No I don't think so. There's
two more hymns that haven't been released, well there's three
actually because me and Jack
have got a title for one, but we haven't written it. There's the
hymn for the telephones, there's the hymn for her cooking and
we had the hymn for the 1950s British folk revival...that actually
hasn't been written yet, but as far as I'm concerned it
exists in my mind."
How did the idea of writing 'hymns for' start?
"It started with the Hymn for
the Postal Service, in the same way that the Fidelity Wars is
a group of songs. A song on its
own is quite a little thing to contain any kind of weighty idea
and I actually don't think its supposed to contain a weighty
idea, and that's why they're good. That's why we like good songs
because they normally say something simple and
succinct, but for that reason I sometimes seem to write songs
in groups and go round a subject. The idea was to sing about
the way innocuous things can have a bigger meaning to an individual.
For most of them I thought of the title before I wrote
the song. Its almost like I set myself a writing exercise like
teachers do at school."
We've finished our tea and all that
remains is to wait for the support band Murray the Hump to turn
up. Darren picked
them because his girlfriend had been playing their song Thrown
Like A Stone to death. It turned out to be the best song
they had when they turned up, miraculously on time, having driven
up from Wales without the aid of a tour manager. (You
can always rely on the Welsh ed)
By the time they come on stage, it
is a few hours since my interview and Hefner have had chance to
graduate from the
Typhoo on to the hard stuff... Darren apologises on arrival for
being a bit pissed, but it seems to be the usual state of play
for the Hefner live experience. They are an innately gawky looking
band which seems to suit their tunes, some awkward,
some sweet, all catchy and direct.
They look like teenagers trapped in the bodies of adults, who dance like girls - but they are just the right side of endearing.
Darren points out the pretence about
running order, a mutual deception. We all know how it works: you
get the hit,
followed by the new ones, then the slow bit and then all the ones
you actually want to hear.... Hefner do the hardness in
their sound (that Darren liked about his favourite Belle and Seb
song) rather well. Particularly in the tracks that go down
best with their live audience, the Hymn for the Cigarettes and
I Took Her Love For Granted. The most interesting song was
a new one about having a party when Maggie Thatcher dies - 'ding
dong the witch is dead'... - They end with Twisting
Mary's Arm, and even though they haven't heard it on record yet,
everyone already seems to know the words. There must
be a lot of prized Hefner bootlegs out there, with the band in
differing states of inebriation. John Morrison, on bass, seems
to be the only one who is keeping the band together, passing my
bass players test ( - look cool and nonplussed, keep time
no matter what, and move better than the rest of the band - )
until he makes a tiny mistake, then Darren and the others can't
wait to pounce - "He gets it right every night, so we are
allowed to be nasty to him!"
Such is their submission to alcohol
this evening that they only do one track, Hello Kitten, for an
encore and then depart the
stage no doubt in search of Star Wars chat rooms and more booze.
Reviewed For The Frame by Lucy Brouwer