Fasterlouder.com.au, 06 February 2006, with Chris Cheney

Author Unknown


THE LIVING END'S CHRIS CHENEY DECLARES A STATE OF EMERGENCY!

Who would have thought a rockabilly covers band from Melbourne in the mid nineties would go on to produce a quintuple-platinum album, two platinum and five gold albums. Yet ten years and three albums later, The Living End are still rockin’ and out to prove they’re more then just a great live band with their fourth album State of Emergency.

Chris Cheney took time out from their busy schedule, touring with the current Big Day Out extravaganza to talk with FasterLouder about their new slab of rock, the blood sweat and tears that went into making State Of Emergency and where they see themselves in the world of rock n roll.

I kicked off the conversation talking abut the diverse influences that can be heard among the tracks on State of Emergency, including The Police, The Beatles and most noticeably Pink Floyd on their second single Wake Up. “That’s the last band in the world that I thought we would have ever gotten compared to, growing up I hated Pink Floyd. It’s the wall thing I suppose, and we have the kids in the video and everything. We’ve been compared to The Clash and Green Day since we began, so to be compared to Pink Floyd that’s kinda refreshing. On the subject of always being compared Chris comments “You have to understand I suppose where an influence can come from, and we love The Clash and you can hear it in our music. What annoys me is when people only say that. I think you can’t pigeonhole what we do and we’ve always tried to say, 'Oh well I love The Sex Pistols but I hate the fact that they were that sloppy all the time. I love guitar solos and I love Brian Setzer, I prefer the way Joe Strummer sings', so we’ve always tried to mix it up and try to find our own voice. I think we did that more than anything else on this album. We found our own influence but you can’t go well that sounds like a rip off of Rock This Town or anything like that."

The first thing you notice when you hear State of Emergency is the return to hard rock that was so evident on their second album Roll On. “Roll On has a bombacity about it, we were out to prove a point with that album after the first one that there was more to the band than just Prisoner. We came out all guns blazing and tried to make it as energetic and melodic as possible, but with this album we tried to make sure each song was going in a particular direction.

Not only does it contain some balls to the wall rock but some very signature Living End anthems like the very feel good tune Nothing Lasts Forever that will give you shivers up your spine when you hear it. “That’s the idea of a song like that, that trades purely on melody as apposed to energy. Its got energy but if the melody doesn’t carry itself off then its missing the point. Those are the songs that hit me the hardest, when you get the chills up your spine. With Nothing Lasts Forever we didn’t want to spoil it with trying to make it too over the top, just let the melody do its thing. We wanted create a mood, like with Wake Up, it had to have mood or it was dead, it was nothing without that. The idea behind a song like Order of The Day was to conjure up images of rock, well the whole album to me has influences from the whole history of rock n’ roll."

Once again the lads asked the renowned producer Nick Launay to help them find a new direction. I asked what it was like working with him and if any of his influence had rubbed off? “It must, that’s the reason we went back to work with him. He’s like a big kid, he just keeps the vibe up at all times. He knows how to pull decent sounds; he knows how to arrange a song. The thing with us, because there’s a diversity with our sound, its not like he’s done only rock records or only punk rock records, he’s done everything. So I can always go to him with an idea, I wanna try this or I wanna pull this kind of sound and he can do it."

As usual there has been some speculation that their fourth album was heading in a new direction and a different sound, to this Chris had
to say, “I don’t think we’ve reinvented ourselves that much. I think we’ve changed a little bit. If you put this album next to Hellbound, sure Hellbound is going to sound a lot more like The Reverend Horton Heat than what this one does. That’s just the stage we were in. Like anything we kinda evolved. I think we’d be mad to muck with the sound too much. There’s a sound to this band we’re very lucky to have and people can identify when they hear it. It doesn’t matter how much layering we put on top we still sound like us, which I’m very thankful of and it would be suicide to fool with that.”

“I do think we’ll experiment with the arrangements and the song writing but we’ll always be a rock band. As great as State of Emergency sounds, Chris concedes it wasn’t all smooth sailing. “Oh it was a nightmare to record! I’m so glad it’s done. It was never ending and it’s been the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do and it nearly killed me but the results are there. I can feel gratified I can listen to it now and thank God I like it, because it’s been such a draining experience, I’ve never worked harder on anything. There were a lot of sleepless nights and I must have re-drafted half a dozen of the songs probably four or five times each."

I commented on Chris’s distinct guitar sound and wether he still draws from any key influences. “I don’t sit down and try to learn other peoples solos as much as I should because that’s a great way to better yourself as a player, to dissect someone else’s work. I just found that I haven’t had a chance really.”

“At the same time the bonus side to that is when you block yourself off from other influences and you just do what’s in your own head and follow your own path, hopefully you can find something unique to you. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. I like guitar players from all walks of life and I always try to mix it up. I try to throw in rockabilly licks with Angus Young bravado and I like to use all the fingers on my right hand, I don’t just use a pick, which comes from a country background. I like Radiohead’s guitar playing where they use noise. To me there’s a whole world of guitar that I haven’t discovered yet and I cant wait to do that on more albums.”

There may be a whole new world of sound for The Living End to explore but as far as State of Emergency is concerned it doesn’t depart too much from it’s predecessors. “This album is still pretty traditional, it’s still rock n’ roll sounding which is what I’m most familiar with.” Chris goes on to say “I listen to the radio, I wouldn’t know the last time and this is probably sad, that I heard a band on the radio and went 'wow, that’s a really interesting guitar' or, 'I love that solo' - it just doesn’t happen. People don’t like guitar solos and they don’t like guitar as a lead instrument its weird.”

One of the great things that can be said about The Living End is that they’ve always been a great live band. No matter how much you like their albums they always sound so much better seeing them rock out in front of a huge crowd. “That’s why we had to make a good record this time, because we’re tired of having this reputation of being a killer live band and I don’t think we matched it in the studio, I don’t think we’ve matched what the level where people see us in a live sense to what they see in our recording. Even though we’ve had hit records, gold records, I just felt that was probably the area that needed improvement. I feel at the end of our career you're not left with the live thing, you're left with the music you made.”

“I feel like we’ve grown up after the first album. This may be our fourth but to me it’s only our fourth album. Some people in this industry probably think of it as well, you’re a few years down the track, your onto your fourth album now… but to me its early days. The song writing and the playing has improved tenfold as far as I’m concerned, there’s no end in sight.”

The new album State of Emergency is in stores.