Interview with Vincent Cavanagh by Eos(November 2001)

On this day I should do my first interview ever so I was damn nervous when I arrived at the Z7, hehe. But despite the very loud soundcheck of the (pretty bad) opening act due to which we had to shout at eachother, everything went fine. Vinnie was very nice and very talkative and I even understood his accent, hehe :o).

Hi Vinnie! How are you?
I'm ok. Yesterday we had a day off and nobody didn't know what to go *gg*. That was boring! You, know, we don't realy want to have days off. Would you like something to drink, by the way?
Yes, a beer please :-) How's the tour going?
Its' good. We had three gigs in Spain so far. It's been seven years since we were last in Spain. Much bigger audience, good reaction from everyone but than again it's like in the most southern european countries. In eastern as well. We always get a realyrealy good reaction. We just try to play as good as we can *gg*
The last tour was with Tiamat and Tristania.
Well we did one after that as well which was just ourselfs in Poland. We toured there for about two weeks.
Do you prefer touring alone or with other bands?
I prefer to play our own shows because it gets us the chance to play what we want and for as long as we like. So I do prefer that. But the tour with Tiamat was a lot of fun. They are realy lovely people! That was great.
How do you chose the songs that are going to be played on a concert?
About five minutes before we play.
So you don't realy have a setlist?
No, not a set thing. Cause we prefer to change around. More often you notice something in the gig and you think "maybe we should switch that one". Or even maybe just to keep it interesting. The songs can change on stage as well. We sometimes get to a point where we realise "oh, lets just not do that one, lets do this one". It just depends on the feel of the thing. Or if somebody has forgotten which song comes next. So just starts to play the wrong song. Usually me *gg*. "Oh, this one's called.. No? It's not?Oh, let's do it anyway"
Are you going to play leave no trace?
Yes! That's a nice one.
Your music is very emotional and sometimes even depressive. Would you describe yourself or the other bandmembers as depressed persons?
No, not when we're out on tour. It's just when you got back home, you get back to your normal life and try to do all the shit. But it's never so serious that it completly takes over. I mean we everybody have our own happy lifes and there are always this wrong moments but the happyness is always transient. I just guess that when you sit down to write a song you try to figure something out or it's a certain mood that you're in or maybe it's just something that you want to get off jour chest or whatever. A lot of things just have more meaning. You might think that it's just sad and maybe they are. But maybe there's a positivity in somebody dealing with it and creating a piece of art out of it or us, whatever you are looking at it. And we really try to figure things out for the best. It doesn't have to be one type of anything, realy. Let's just say that there can be moments of reflection or you can be a person of philosophy or it could be an experience. It can also be about love or about a moment.
Sometimes your music can realy touch the listener. I mean you wrote it in a touching situation and the fans can feel this. How do you feel about it? There are also fans just crying when they are listening your music.
Yes....I'm not realy sure about it, to be honest. Ahem... Oh God... The songs are full of feelings and passion but that's not because we necessary want to move people. We do it for ourselfs. And if we put as much feelings and passion in a song as we can and it's about a subject which a lot of people can relate to because it's about an experience than of course you are going to get that. But that's always afterwards. We never sit down and write a song that is going to make people bawl their eyes out *gg*. We were in Greece. I was just talking to somebody who was doing the t-shirts. And they opened the doors and all the people run in at the same time. And then I just remembre being grabbed around my head. And there was this guy with short blond hair, glasses and spots. He didn't look like the usual Greek metal-fan. I was just trying to get him off of me and then I realised that my cheek was all wet and I realised that he was crying on me! He was crying on my face. And I was just like "Gett off!!!" *starts to strike the air with his arms..gg*. What would you do? AAAHHHH!!!!
Writing such lyrics you actually reveal a lot of yourself. How does it feel to share such feelings with people you don't know?
We try not to think about it realy. I don't realy thing of it like I'm sharing everything or like baring my soul for you to listen to it. It's just like "this is my song, this is how I feal about it" *swears at the opening act who's doing the soundcheck, too loud*. I just thing about the music, about the song and just put everything into that. At certain times I have to try not to concentrate on the words that I'm singing. Just concentrate on the vocals itself and try to make sure that it sounds well and not thinking about the words while singing them because for obwious reasons. It's different fo revery song as well. It depends on the moment. Especially when we're playing live we don't stand there miserable on stage. We have a good time playing we really do and we just enjoy it. We try to eject a little more comedy into things now. There are a few more funny moments there.
"A Fine Day To Exit" is actually a very different album than the older ones. They are much heavier...
It's not necessary that this album is more different from the other. I've been asked this a few times so I tried to think about it honestly. If I listen to all of our albums each of them sounds different than the last one to me and I think there's a natural progression there. Ok, it might be a little bigger jump from "Judgement" to this one. But thats because at the time we did "Judgement" we consciously wanted to go back and make more guitar songs. "Alternative 4" was a bit more atmospheric. This time we wanted to do as many different types of sounds as we all wanted to. You write a lot of songs an then you pick the best ones out. We don't consciously sit down and decide which direction we are going to take or we don't know how the next album is going to be like until it's done. Because it will constantly change. This album just has more styles and music on there. It' not necessarily harder, softer, darker, lighter or whatever. It's just more of everything.. to me.
And what does the record company think about this change?
They see us getting better in what we are doing. And we feel the same way too. And our next album is always going to be the best one we have done. That's the way we look at it. They like it. I don't know. Ask them. I don't realy care what they think to be honest with you.
I heard something about you not being as happy with this new album as the other bandmembers are. That you think it's to soft...
Nonono! That's not true at all. I think right after we did the album I didn't want to hear it, I didn't want to know about it, didn't want to think about it. But you cant get away from it. But that's natural anyway. I think there was a bit more pressure with doing this album. We are perfectionist and after the recording we notice things that we would have like done differently and then we don't want to know about it. And about a month afterwards I was listening to it in the car and I was just about to stop the car and go out. But I decided to sit there and listen to it because it sounded realy good. I think thisone's the best we've done.
There's also another change and that's the vocals. I mean your voice. It sounds much cleaner than on the last album. Did you have lessons?
No. When I first started to sing I did two albums trying to discover what to do. I tried to sing five years ago on "Eternity" for the first time realy. As a person try to sing realy. And than shortly after thatone I did about six or seven lessons. Than we did "Alternative 4" and "Judgement" and than thisone but I hadn't any since then. I just getting more comfortable with it and more confident and getting closer to the sound of my voice. Everybody got their own sound and I'm just getting closer to it realy but haven't got there yet.
There's this song called "Barriers". Why did Danny take over the vocals?
it was decided in the studio. It was because of the personal aspect to the lyrics. It was about a relationship. We decided to make it again a duett between Danny and Lee (Lee Douglas, John's sister) like on the last album "Parisienne Moonlight" *swears at the opening act again*. We decided to make it the same. But this time it's not just a piano-song it's with drums and all that. It was because of the subject matter. And Danny wrote the lyrics so he felt very close to them.
"A Fine Day To Exit" is actually a depressive album handling bad experiences. But than there's the end of it, the speaking part and this funny song. What are they about? I mean, in the speaking part I couldn't understand anything. Not a word!
*gg* You're not going to. You're realy not going to understand it.
It was not only the content!
The accent! It's John *gg*. When we were in the studio he went for a walk with one of these actually *MD-Player*. He went for a walk in the snow crunching arround talking to himself. It was a last-minute thing. We realised that if we mix that with this other thing we had at the end of the album, the waves, we could have a scene with this fellow walking down the beach at the end of a film. It's just basically drug-induced psycho bubble. It's all nonsense or it makes a lot of sense if you wanted to. But it's very funny as well. That's what it is.
And what's this cats and chicken thing?
*starts to shout* What about dogs?!? What about cats?!? You know, not enough people aks the question. If Michael Jackson can ask what about elephants why can't we aks about the cats. *ggg*
And the last song, the one with Marilyn Manson and his dress gotten caught. What's its name?
It's called "Dog's house" that one. Marilyn Manson just fell over because his dress got caught in his high heels.
That was the only part I could understand.
*sings* Marilyn Manson just fell over...
The first time I heard it I thought "sounds like a kind of a Beatles-song". Then I heard something about Jesus and i just thought "oh my goodness, what's this?". But then I heard this Marilyn Manson part and then was like "ok, it's getting interesting".
It is very funny! It's been a laugh realy especially the "WAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!" *screaming*. I know what you are talking about. With writing this song we could spot more the positive side in the lyrics and the rest of the album as well. Like "A Fine Day To Exit" and the concept behind that because that does embrace a lot of the songs. The need to escape, the need to get away or the need to start again, a kind of rebirth. And these are the positive things. That's what's the story about. The guy faked his own death and started a new life. These things are all positive. And the song "A Fine Day To Exit" the last lyric is you gotta face your head on to turn this thing around. It's like recognise the problems and try to deal with them. You know John wrote that song and that was what came out of his brain. He's a very happy and funny guy but he took to many chemicals at a time in his life. It just imbalanced things and he's trying to deal with that. Waking up in the morning with this buzzing in the head and can't switch it off. But his getting better with time. All of us. I suppose mainly because we're so close to what we do we recognise a lot of things other people don't. But at the same time we're not trying to shout from the rooftops "this what our songs are about". It's for you to figure it out and do what ever you want with it.
Do you sometimes listen to the Anathema albums and how does that feel? Does it have a kind of back-shift-effect on you into the situation you wrote it?
Yes, of course. The lyrics will remind you of what you were thing at that time and why you thought it and what you ment. And the music always remind us of where we were at that point. Maybe that studio-session or whatever. But I don't often listen to our stuff to be honest.
Is there any favourite album?
The next one's the best.
And any you don't like at all?
No, not really. We like them all for their own thing. Probably "Serenades" is my least favourite. I'm not saying it's no good. It's all right. *growls..gg*
I bought "Crestfallen" and "Pentecost III" recently. I couldn't believe it's Anathema for I only knew the stuff after "Eternity".
*gg* Yes!! It's not realy the same band, isn't it!?
Almost the whole new album was on the internet before it came out. How does that happen and do you think it's harmfull for the band?
It comes because the record company gives promos out and promos just get copied. It's just the way thingh are. People buy an album if they want to buy it if they are into the band. And they buy t-shirts if they want to do that if they think the band's realy cool. I used to get copies of tapes if I couldn't get a CD. I waited to get the money and bought it then anyway because I wanted the cover and the package and all that. So I don't think it makes so much difference really. (girl comes in: "One minute, ok?") One minute what? To the next interview? Don't worry about it!!
What are the plans for 2002? Are there any new CDs, Videos, DVDs?
We're working as hard as we can for the new songs. We got a lot of new ideas already. We would to record a new album next year. We have just done a video. For the song called "Pressure". It's like an experiment. It was a student who makes this short films. A friend of the record company. We had an idea and he just took that and did something out of it. It's not very close to our original idea it's a bit close maybe but I haven't seen it yet. So first I'll have to see it. But the record company was pretty cool about it. They said "Ok, it's our experiment. If you don't like it you don't have to pay for it and we won't use it. But let's just see how it works out.". Because they want to bring a single out in January and we're on tour now and can't make a video ourselfes. It's the idea. It's been finished now, I think. We have plans to make a film out of this concept for the album. It's just that we're just trying to get a financial backing from the record company to do it. It's a full lenght feature thing like "The Wall". You know, the songs from the album and a story about this one guy. To be honest with you not that this other guy has done the video I'm not realy sure about the purity of someone else doing it. Because of the concept. It is ours. Of course this things are always dictated by money in first place anyway. So big plans for next year. Loads of gigs, festivals, albums, songs, clowns, astronauts.. *gg*

added here on 18-Nov-05 21:13 GMT