Scott Owen - The Living End (26/02/2014)
Touring for Soundwave Festival 2014, The 59th Sound caught up with Scott Owen of The Living End to chat about their last minute addition to the festival!
Hi Scott how are you?
Great Cassie how are you?
I’m very excited as The Living End have been a last minute addition to the lineup for Soundwave 2014 was this always planned or did it come as a surprise?
It came as a surprise, I only found out about it the day everyone else found out about it because it all came together so quickly that there was no time to stew on it. Soundwave’s always been on our radar because it’s an unreal festival and I’m really glad that they’ve opened the door to a few more Australian bands because it’s been mostly international bands over the past few years, but it’s really cool that they’ve opened that door up and we’re so excited, we were sort of looking down the barrel of not doing a hell of a lot this year and when that came up it was just a huge relief we were all really excited like “hey we get to out and play an actual tour that’s really, really cool”.
Absolutely, because so many things have happened so quickly in the career of The Living End, like this has it happened a few times where you’ve been the last to know big news?
Yeah but part of it is out of the ‘ignorance is bliss’ theory. When there has been big news we try and keep a lid on letting it get to us, trying not to over think it is what I’m trying to say, while I over think what I’m trying to say. We have been fortunate enough to be able to come across a few of those milestones career wise, I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s still nothing like getting that phone call to go on the Soundwave tour and you get that actual rush of excitement and adrenaline because it’s like “yeah, fuck yeah we get to go out and play again” that’s one of the highlights, the career highlight is that feeling of eagerness and excitement and still loving doing it after all these bloody years.
And you did say it was looking to be a quiet year for The Living End after Soundwave what have you got planned?
Well we don’t have many plans for this year, the plan was to not do much this year, we might take two gigs here and there but we didn’t want to put any pressure on ourselves to make another record at this point, we might just put that off for a little while. We’re all living in different parts of the world, there’s the distance there so we figured we’d put it on standby for a little while, not hang up the boots or the gloves or whatever the saying is but just put it on standby for the year but now this tour’s come up it’s like “yeah I guess we won’t do that”.
Although you’re the countries most popular punk band is this the first time you’ve been invited to play Soundwave?
Yeah it is. I think it was Soundwaves thing, just to put on a festival with mostly international bands because there is a shitload of festivals in Australia with Australian bands, there’s no shortage of places to go play on the festival circuit but it is cool to mix it up with Australian bands.
Having seen The Living End on every tour I have noticed you’ve got a generic festival set, seeming Soundwave is more of a punk festival will we hear some more of those old school, punk tunes?
We figure that when you’re at a festival, whatever band is playing you want to hear what you want to hear. You don’t go to see bands do their most obscure album tracks and b-sides, I think at festivals you’ve only got an hour to do your thing so you’ve got to get out there and just play the songs you think people are going to appreciate the most because it’s such a big crowd and it’s impossible to cater for everyone so I think that’s why we always play it reasonably safe at festivals. We just don’t want to bore people with songs that are obscure, we’d rather just play the ones that most people are likely to know because festivals are party town, it’s not like going to normal gig where you might want to hear a bunch of songs off the new record or the old songs off earlier records and stuff I think at a festival you just want to hear what you know, that’s how I see it.
I can’t believe you just used the word boring in a conversation about your live show.
I hope we don’t get boring, maybe when our knees and hips and backs and stuff start to go we might have to do the unplugged set or something but fuck I hope that’s not in the foreseeable future.
You’ve been doing it for this long and once you’re on stage it’s as if you haven’t aged.
They say that rock’n’roll keeps you young, keeps you childish and I think it’s absolutely true. There’s generally a song or two on each record that we’ve put out which is a bit more mellow, that slower sort of song unlike that foot to floor sound that most of our songs have but whenever we play them live we just feel like a rabbit in headlights or something, it just doesn’t feel right, we’re in our comfort zone when we’re pushing ourselves to the limits. We’re most comfortable when we’re uncomfortable I think.
Apart from the album tours has there ever been a live show when you haven’t played ‘Prisoner of Society’?
Yeah there’s been a few, I mean I say we’ve played that song like 90% of the time you know it’s nostalgia that song, but there was a while there where we actually did get a little bit sick of it, I’ll friggin say it, we got a little bit sick of it and just ditched it. There was times when we were doing heaps of touring, when we weren’t touring Australia we were touring overseas and we were just playing and playing and playing and was getting a bit sick of it and then we’d go to countries where hardly anyone had even bought our first record so it wasn’t that much of a big deal, but we did ditch it for a little while but to be perfectly honest it’s still a fucking fun song to play, it’s stood the test of time in my books anyway I don’t know how other people feel about it but as far as I’m concerned I still like playing it, it’s still got all that stuff that our band does best and we still get excited about playing that particular style of revved up, hot rod, rockabilly music or whatever that song is so I don’t think it’s ever going to go away.
Never! Prisoner of Society came 34 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of all time, I still hear it on the radio today and it’s still one of my most played tracks on my iPod, it’s one of those songs that I can see still influencing kids in 50 years time, at the time of writing it did you feel the power that song held?
I don’t know if we did at the time because we just had our heads down and we were on a mission and it was when everything was just starting to happen for us, things were changing, we were getting more gigs, we were touring more, going overseas and all of a sudden record companies were involved and it became a bit more serious and I was like “shit maybe I won’t end up getting a day job soon” so life was changing but we just put our foot to the floor and went “right if we’re going to do this, lets do it, put our heads down and get on with the job” and we didn’t look back. The next album ‘Roll On’- bang and then the next album- bang, bang, bang, tour, tour, tour and then when we did that retrospect tour at the end of 2012 when I actually realized what people saw in this record (The self titled), I never actually thought about it before, but I think I realize now playing it after all these years I think I realize the appeal, I can now finally see why everyone liked it because when you make a record, well when we make a record we tend to be so friggen critical about it for so long it takes years to get over the critical attitude and just sit back and enjoy it, so we didn’t know, I mean we knew what was going on but we didn’t really sit back and pat each other on the back and hi-five each other like “wow check us out” we were just like “right, what’s next? What’s next?”.
What did the Retrospect tour that you did in 2012 teach you?
I guess the most important lesson was being album to see each album in its own light. It was so weird being on that tour going into the same venue every night and getting up and playing a different album you have to rearrange your headspace every day and go “ok today is ‘Modern Artillery’ day I have to start running those around in my head” and just getting reading for it all. In that sense it gives you meaning of what the album actually was and getting up and playing it, as I was saying of how critical we’ve always been of our records now that they’re behind us getting up and doing that tour was like ‘far out man, these records are all fun to play’, in completely different ways they’ve all got their different strengths and weaknesses and we were just able to gather an enormous perspective on what we’ve done.
Has going back through the records to how you started influenced your approach to playing and performing?
It’s made us realize what works for this band and what doesn’t work for this band because we’ve put songs on records that we’ve never played live before, apart from that tour, because they just don’t work live or they’re more difficult to play live so it’s given us that opportunity to see what we can do easily, what feels good and what works for us and so that has an impact on what we do in the future.
And you did say you’re not working on an album this year, after that tour did you have the opportunity to work on new songs?
We were in Germany last year and during sound check we’d bust out a few new ideas here and there but at this point we only have a really vague plan to just regroup next year and think about the future then.
Cassie Walker
Hi Scott how are you?
Great Cassie how are you?
I’m very excited as The Living End have been a last minute addition to the lineup for Soundwave 2014 was this always planned or did it come as a surprise?
It came as a surprise, I only found out about it the day everyone else found out about it because it all came together so quickly that there was no time to stew on it. Soundwave’s always been on our radar because it’s an unreal festival and I’m really glad that they’ve opened the door to a few more Australian bands because it’s been mostly international bands over the past few years, but it’s really cool that they’ve opened that door up and we’re so excited, we were sort of looking down the barrel of not doing a hell of a lot this year and when that came up it was just a huge relief we were all really excited like “hey we get to out and play an actual tour that’s really, really cool”.
Absolutely, because so many things have happened so quickly in the career of The Living End, like this has it happened a few times where you’ve been the last to know big news?
Yeah but part of it is out of the ‘ignorance is bliss’ theory. When there has been big news we try and keep a lid on letting it get to us, trying not to over think it is what I’m trying to say, while I over think what I’m trying to say. We have been fortunate enough to be able to come across a few of those milestones career wise, I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s still nothing like getting that phone call to go on the Soundwave tour and you get that actual rush of excitement and adrenaline because it’s like “yeah, fuck yeah we get to go out and play again” that’s one of the highlights, the career highlight is that feeling of eagerness and excitement and still loving doing it after all these bloody years.
And you did say it was looking to be a quiet year for The Living End after Soundwave what have you got planned?
Well we don’t have many plans for this year, the plan was to not do much this year, we might take two gigs here and there but we didn’t want to put any pressure on ourselves to make another record at this point, we might just put that off for a little while. We’re all living in different parts of the world, there’s the distance there so we figured we’d put it on standby for a little while, not hang up the boots or the gloves or whatever the saying is but just put it on standby for the year but now this tour’s come up it’s like “yeah I guess we won’t do that”.
Although you’re the countries most popular punk band is this the first time you’ve been invited to play Soundwave?
Yeah it is. I think it was Soundwaves thing, just to put on a festival with mostly international bands because there is a shitload of festivals in Australia with Australian bands, there’s no shortage of places to go play on the festival circuit but it is cool to mix it up with Australian bands.
Having seen The Living End on every tour I have noticed you’ve got a generic festival set, seeming Soundwave is more of a punk festival will we hear some more of those old school, punk tunes?
We figure that when you’re at a festival, whatever band is playing you want to hear what you want to hear. You don’t go to see bands do their most obscure album tracks and b-sides, I think at festivals you’ve only got an hour to do your thing so you’ve got to get out there and just play the songs you think people are going to appreciate the most because it’s such a big crowd and it’s impossible to cater for everyone so I think that’s why we always play it reasonably safe at festivals. We just don’t want to bore people with songs that are obscure, we’d rather just play the ones that most people are likely to know because festivals are party town, it’s not like going to normal gig where you might want to hear a bunch of songs off the new record or the old songs off earlier records and stuff I think at a festival you just want to hear what you know, that’s how I see it.
I can’t believe you just used the word boring in a conversation about your live show.
I hope we don’t get boring, maybe when our knees and hips and backs and stuff start to go we might have to do the unplugged set or something but fuck I hope that’s not in the foreseeable future.
You’ve been doing it for this long and once you’re on stage it’s as if you haven’t aged.
They say that rock’n’roll keeps you young, keeps you childish and I think it’s absolutely true. There’s generally a song or two on each record that we’ve put out which is a bit more mellow, that slower sort of song unlike that foot to floor sound that most of our songs have but whenever we play them live we just feel like a rabbit in headlights or something, it just doesn’t feel right, we’re in our comfort zone when we’re pushing ourselves to the limits. We’re most comfortable when we’re uncomfortable I think.
Apart from the album tours has there ever been a live show when you haven’t played ‘Prisoner of Society’?
Yeah there’s been a few, I mean I say we’ve played that song like 90% of the time you know it’s nostalgia that song, but there was a while there where we actually did get a little bit sick of it, I’ll friggin say it, we got a little bit sick of it and just ditched it. There was times when we were doing heaps of touring, when we weren’t touring Australia we were touring overseas and we were just playing and playing and playing and was getting a bit sick of it and then we’d go to countries where hardly anyone had even bought our first record so it wasn’t that much of a big deal, but we did ditch it for a little while but to be perfectly honest it’s still a fucking fun song to play, it’s stood the test of time in my books anyway I don’t know how other people feel about it but as far as I’m concerned I still like playing it, it’s still got all that stuff that our band does best and we still get excited about playing that particular style of revved up, hot rod, rockabilly music or whatever that song is so I don’t think it’s ever going to go away.
Never! Prisoner of Society came 34 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of all time, I still hear it on the radio today and it’s still one of my most played tracks on my iPod, it’s one of those songs that I can see still influencing kids in 50 years time, at the time of writing it did you feel the power that song held?
I don’t know if we did at the time because we just had our heads down and we were on a mission and it was when everything was just starting to happen for us, things were changing, we were getting more gigs, we were touring more, going overseas and all of a sudden record companies were involved and it became a bit more serious and I was like “shit maybe I won’t end up getting a day job soon” so life was changing but we just put our foot to the floor and went “right if we’re going to do this, lets do it, put our heads down and get on with the job” and we didn’t look back. The next album ‘Roll On’- bang and then the next album- bang, bang, bang, tour, tour, tour and then when we did that retrospect tour at the end of 2012 when I actually realized what people saw in this record (The self titled), I never actually thought about it before, but I think I realize now playing it after all these years I think I realize the appeal, I can now finally see why everyone liked it because when you make a record, well when we make a record we tend to be so friggen critical about it for so long it takes years to get over the critical attitude and just sit back and enjoy it, so we didn’t know, I mean we knew what was going on but we didn’t really sit back and pat each other on the back and hi-five each other like “wow check us out” we were just like “right, what’s next? What’s next?”.
What did the Retrospect tour that you did in 2012 teach you?
I guess the most important lesson was being album to see each album in its own light. It was so weird being on that tour going into the same venue every night and getting up and playing a different album you have to rearrange your headspace every day and go “ok today is ‘Modern Artillery’ day I have to start running those around in my head” and just getting reading for it all. In that sense it gives you meaning of what the album actually was and getting up and playing it, as I was saying of how critical we’ve always been of our records now that they’re behind us getting up and doing that tour was like ‘far out man, these records are all fun to play’, in completely different ways they’ve all got their different strengths and weaknesses and we were just able to gather an enormous perspective on what we’ve done.
Has going back through the records to how you started influenced your approach to playing and performing?
It’s made us realize what works for this band and what doesn’t work for this band because we’ve put songs on records that we’ve never played live before, apart from that tour, because they just don’t work live or they’re more difficult to play live so it’s given us that opportunity to see what we can do easily, what feels good and what works for us and so that has an impact on what we do in the future.
And you did say you’re not working on an album this year, after that tour did you have the opportunity to work on new songs?
We were in Germany last year and during sound check we’d bust out a few new ideas here and there but at this point we only have a really vague plan to just regroup next year and think about the future then.
Cassie Walker