Legendary guitarist Nick McCabe talks about his new band, The Black Ships, consisting of members of Portishead, Goldfrapp and The Verve, their unique approach to recording, the state of the record industry and what went wrong with Richard Ashcroft. The Black Ships recently played their first gig, a sold out show at King's College and released their first recording, the 25 minute epic, Kurufone EP.
DiS: Congratulations on the EP, it has an interesting structure, starting with the vocal track and then breaking down into the more experimental instrumental stuff.
NM: Yeah, we don’t want people to be horrified when we do this in the future really. One of the things that happened with the Verve was that a large section of the fan base had come to see us live post Urban Hymns.
DiS: Like everyone at Haigh Hall (The Verve homecoming gig, to a sell-out forty thousand crowd).
NM: Yeah, exactly, going, “What the fuck is this shit”.
DiS: There has always been two Verve’s, especially out here in the US. Those that think The Verve is “That angry guy walking down the street singing Bittersweet Symphony”, and then there are those that obsess over the bootlegs of Gravity Grave.
NM: Yes, and it’s difficult because that never really got reconciled. This time we are keen to avoid misconceptions from day one.
DiS: So from the start you are releasing something more experimental and less commercial so people don’t expect a rock n roll album?
NM: Well the album is a collection of songs, but the idea was not originally to write songs, per se, so we found ourselves in the middle of having eighty pieces of music to turn into songs.
DiS: Some of the slow dark heavy grooves remind me of the last three songs on A Northern Soul, with Davide Rossi’s (of Goldfrapp) violin on top.
NM: Yeah, when we met Dav it just seemed obvious really; it was the logical next step. I quite enjoyed it when Tongie (Simon Tong, former Verve Urban Hymns era second guitarist). I changed my role considerably. I actually have got a penchant for Fleetwood Mac and AOR, in amongst all the experimental stuff; I do have a taste for really good pop music. I embraced that for a while, and then queried it later, as you are probably aware. I’m a little bit disappointed in the reception Forth got (The Verve’s 2008 come-back album), but I can understand why, it did go off course towards the end. It’s the typical story you get from bands when they are signed to major labels, certain aspects of control get usurped. I thought I was making another kind of record.
DiS: It would have been nice to see that album live.
NM: That’s the major pitfall of that record, it was ready to go live but for whatever reason Richard (Ashcroft) didn’t want to do it. We were ready to go but then it didn’t happen and people felt snubbed, which maybe bred negativity in the press towards the album.
NM: During that period though, Si and myself were pretty prolific. We had played together not as The Verve, just a year earlier, just the two of us working on new material. So we had reacquainted with what we could do, and we are to all intents and purposes a team, Si and myself. I had already forged that relationship with Mig (Schillace, The Black Ships drummer, formerly of Portishead), and then when Dav got on board it was like, “oh, wow, look at this!” It was serendipity, we ended up with four people with different personalities and different backgrounds, but we all clicked musically, with a rampant passion for playing again. It was always difficult with the Verve because it seemed that it got to the point that rehearsals were reduced to a functional preparation.
