How are you?
I am good. I’ve been walking around Berlin stopping for a little beer depot now and then. I’ve bought some records. I bought 2 Burt Jansch records, and I bought an Incredible String Band record, I bought a couple of Bob Dylan bootlegs and some psychedelia, I don’t remember the name of it. Some Hungarian psychedelia from the 60s. It had a beautiful cover.
I bought myself a nice suit. The sun is shining. Everybody is so happy and beautiful…and I’m not on E.
Enjoying touring?
Well, we’ve done a lot of shows in Sweden, and we’ve only been touring in Europe for a short while, but it’s great here. I don’t mean to disrespect Sweden, but it’s been a lot more fun since we left Sweden. I don’t know really what happened to us. We just lost it there for a while. We were cancelling shows, and we messed up a hotel room too. But everyone is in perfect shape now, and having a good time. Playing shows, not cancelling. Behaving.
Are you happy with the new album?
Yea, we’re still doing our thing, and I think we’ve getting better on every album we do. It’s not a dramatic change, but still. If there is one thing that was my least favourite thing on the older albums it was those quick punky tunes which are cheerful but still pretty one-dimensional. I think we’ve moved away from that stuff a little bit. I know that a lot of people think that is for the worse, a lot of people liked that stuff. But we have to be true to ourselves and do what we like, and not trying to please other. First of all we are trying to please ourselves, and then we hope that the audience dig it too. And the new album is doing well, so it seems that people are responding to it.
So what caused this change, was it a case of you growing up?
I guess I’m just older…and more tired. I still like some punk stuff, but I don’t listen to it as much as I used to. Although I can’t get enough of the Dead Kennedys. I always get happy when I hear early Slayer stuff, that’s just raw energy. But to be quite honest I don’t sit around listening to it in the same way as I used to. My music taste has become more like an old man’s taste. I have developed a broader taste; I listen to more folk and soft stuff like Nico, as well as things electro music with vocoders and house music. I spend maybe 75% of my waking hours listening to music, talking about music, looking for records and so on.
There are a few playlists posted on your website about what your listening too, and it’s very eclectic. Will we be hearing a more eclectic sound form the Caesars on future albums?
It’s strange, because even though I listen to loads of different kinds of music, the stuff we do with the Caesars is fairly homogenous. When we get together and play, that’s the sound that comes out. I think the stuff we listen to does get absorbed into our music, but it’s very subtle. Foe example, one of the guitar riffs on Cracking Up is straight from Kraftwerk and ‘Pocket Calculator’, but it’s still on a reverb drenched 60s guitar so it sounds like us, but it’s a complete rip-off from Kraftwerk, which is not really what you expect in a Caesars song. I don’t really believe that if you listen to Jimi Hendrix and dig it, your band will start to sound like Jimi Hendrix. That would mean that you have no identity. We have a very strong identity, and a strong sound, which is ours. We would rather develop and refine that sound, rather than make a disco record.
The Caesars have been going for quite a long time now, does it feel good to finally achieve some commercial success?
Well it doesn’t feel bad, but that was never the primary goal, it’s not what I’m after. I want some other kind of recognition. I want people to really like our music. I mean, the commercial success doesn’t hurt. We are trying to make music that we like a lot, and I want the true music lovers out there to be able to appreciate our music.
Your sound is rooted in a time when digital technology was not in existence. Do you think the recent rise in digital recording technology is helping or harming artists?
Technology is just something you can use to realise your ideas, you can use it and you can misuse it. It can create a lot of possibilities, and those can be used in a positive, tasteful way, or you can also create something very tasteless. It’s not really down to the technology. Making good music doesn’t take place on a computer, it takes place in your head. It’s still about ideas and taste, and the computer is just a tool. I wouldn’t use computers to program a beat or anything like that because that is not our style, be we’ve recorded some things on the computer and it is practical, but we still have to have the analogue sound. You can have a lot of fun with it.
How do you feel about your songs being available on P2P networks?
I think the record companies make their biggest long-term mistakes by refusing to realise that the Internet was not just going to disappear. They just put their heads in the sand like an ostrich, just hoping that the whole thing would go away, rather than jumping on that train and helping develop it. Now they’re doing things like iTunes, but that’s what they should have been doing 10 years ago. The industry is about 10 years behind. The only have themselves to blame, and I don’t really feel sorry for a huge multinational corporation if it’s losing money, when there are single mothers in the suburbs with children they can’t feed. I guess a few artists suffer as well, but who cares if James Hetfield can afford one less swimming pool.
So you wouldn’t be too upset if Astralwerks or Virgin went under?
I wouldn’t give a flying fuck! [pause] Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
You once mentioned that things that are trendy now are bound to become unfashionable in the near future. If this is indeed the case, what does the future hold for the Caesars?
Hmm…well, right now we’re the flavour of the month, but two weeks from now we’ll be the flavour of last month. So maybe this is the zenith of our career and it’s all downhill from here: I can always get a job at the Post Office.
How much of the success of the album is down to ‘that’ ad, and how much is down to it being a OK album?
Well, the record was being made anyway and we were still going to put it out. I don’t know, I think we have that ad to thank for a lot of things. ‘Jerk it Out’ is only on there because it was on the commercial. I think it has made a difference. Because of that song people got interested, but there are lots of other good songs on there, and if there weren’t then I think people would have lost interest pretty quickly. There is something more to discover than ‘Jerk it Out’.
How do you respond to critics who accuse you of being wholly derivative and lacking originality?
Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but I don’t agree with it. I think we have quite a unique sound. I’m quite proud of what we do. There are always people who don’t like what you do, and there is nothing you can do about that. As long as we like it, we’re happy.
Do you think you will leave a musical legacy or do you think that all that will be left when you are gone is royalty cheques?
I don’t know. The thing is, a lot of the record that I dig out of dusty old crates in cellars from the 60s, that’s stuff that’s been long since forgotten. But the cool thing is that if you make a record and put it out it’s going to be there for a long time, and there is always the chance that someone is going to pick it up. It might not be the next big thing, but just somebody might pick that record up and dig the song. We don’t make novelty plastic songs, they’re quality songs. It’s like sending a satellite out into space, and maybe someday someone might pick it up. I don’t think we’ll ever be Led Zeppelin or The Beatles, but maybe some people will still hear our songs in 30 years time.