Interviews

Undercover, Australia - Damien Rice interview

In the late 90's Damien Rice fronted a mildly successful Irish pop band called Juniper. The trouble was Rice was never a pop star. They had a few hits but Rice wanted out and left the band. That is when the real Damien Rice story starts.

Cut to now and Damien Rice is the singer songwriter who recently won the Shortlist Award in Los Angeles. While pop hits aren't his bag, being handed awards is equally a non event for the serious songwriter. The album that did it for Rice is titled 'O'.

He talks to Undercover's Paul Cashmere

Paul Cashmere: You were in a band called Juniper and I'm going to start off by linking that back to something Australian so first off tell us whatever happened to them.

Damien Rice: They became Bellx1.

PC: And were then produced by Nick Seymour from Crowded House.

DR: That's right, yeah.

PC: Nick used to live in Melbourne, Australia and now lives in Dublin, Ireland and there is our Damian Rice link with Australia.

DR: (laughs) Yeah, it is funny when you do that you can bring any person to any other person in a number of steps.

PC: The old 'six degrees of separation' thing but this means you have a one degree link with Crowded House.

DR: Yeah (laughs). I have met Nick. I've been over to his apartment in Dublin quite a few times.

PC: So tell me how did it feel to win the Shortlist Award?

DR: According to other people I am a bit of a weirdo when it comes to award things. For me, I don't hold any weight or attachment to any awards. For me music is not competitive. There is no winner or loser or somebody who is better than someone else really. For me art is so expressive that it is wrong to say any one thing is better than any one else. I was actually a little bit uncomfortable winning it actually but a lot of people don't understand that. That is fine. It was very nice of people to think of me and it was very thrilling for people to think about the record in the way that they did and to have warmed to it but I don't hold any attachment to it. I think if you are going to be artistic about something you can't think about what it is otherwise it can become too contrived. A lot of people seem to think I don't appreciate things or that I don't get excited about things. I do. I just don't get excited by what other people get excited about. That's all.

PC: Didn't you perform at the awards show?

DR We were in Los Angeles and the last night of our tour was the night before so we went along and played a few songs. It was a good night actually. I hadn't heard of a lot of the bands and some of them were really good.

PC: You appeared on the Letterman show in the States. That is pretty big.

DR: It's on one of those satellite channels that go everywhere. We had played a show in New York, a small show, and someone from Letterman came down to the show. They really liked it and rang our publicist the next day and asked if we would come on the show. There were two or three shows that came in at the same time after the first show in New York and it was just really funny. It was exciting at the time but, again, it is just a TV show. The most important thing for me is just playing well. It doesn't matter where it is or what it is. It doesn't matter of 100 people of it you are playing the Letterman show an audience of whatever. It doesn't matter. Again it is the kind of thing that other people get excited about. It gave me a smirk on my face for a couple of minutes. I mean that in a nice way. A lot of people put a lot of weight on it but for me it is not about size, it is about expression.

PC: You sound like you have a very down to earth approach to your music and just back on Juniper, I read you left Juniper because the record company was pushing you to a pop sound.

DR: They wanted to 'radiofy' what I was doing. I was also in a position where I was compromised. I was much younger and maybe it is because I am Irish but there was a guilt factor when the record company pays you a lot of money, you feel obliged. You go into the studio and they say "we need this to sound like that" and you go "what" and you end up bending things to please other people. I got uncomfortable with it. They promised me if the first single was a hit then we could have more freedom with it. The first single was a hit so they wanted it again for the second single and then we were told what we were doing. I thought "fuck off" and I got really pissed off and left the band. I hated the industry for a while but I don't anymore. I have no problem with the industry right now because I am free of it.

PC: Let's talk about the album and the song 'Amie'. That is one which dates back to your Juniper days.

DR: 'Amie' we never really did live. We did a recording of it in the studio just to make a go of it. I wrote 'Amie' a good couple of years ago and I wrote 'Eskimo' even before that, 'Volcano' as well. They are songs I wrote when I was in Juniper.

PC: 'Eskimo' has that amazing operatic vocal. Tell me who that is and how you came to work with her?

DR: Her name is Doreen Curran. She is a friend of our cellist. I met her one day when I was doing this TV show. That's how I met Vivian the cello player as well. I was just recording the song. The strings were all down and I had this melody in my head. I was trying to work out what it was when I worked out it wasn't a string melody; it wanted to be a vocal melody. It just came into my head. That's why I don't like accepting awards because I don't feel I have done anything. Things just pop in my head. I don't sit down and create them. They just come from nowhere. It was one of those moments of musical madness. That is what I love the most, when things surprise me even.

PC: The track 'The Blower's Daughter' goes back to September 2001. Does this album feel like years of work to you?

DR If you look at my life, my songwriting life changed when I was in Juniper. I got to a point. There was a time when I had three days to write songs and I was frustrated in the fact that I was thinking I was a songwriter and that is my job and I should really be working at this as a songwriter writing songs. I realized it was a completely wrong approach having this idea that you are supposed to work at it. After three days I picked up the guitar and 'Eskimo' literally flew into my head in ten minutes. For me I was sitting there feeling sad about not being able to write so I started to write about my feelings about not being able to write. Once that happened I have never tried to write again. I now don't write songs. I just go to wherever I go to. It is like going to the toilet. You don't decide you are going to go to the toilet today or go to the toilet three times today. You just eat and the food you put into your system will decide when it wants to come out.

PC: Let's talk about David Arnold. How did you get involved with him?

DR: When I was in Juniper I was right on the verge of signing this record deal. My grandmother said "you know you have a relation who signed a record deal recently". I didn't even know him at the time. He was my dad's cousin. I rang him up to introduce myself for a bit of advice. We became friends and clicked with each other and when I left the band and the record label I was with he took an interest because he was curious about why I left the band. I recorded some demos and he really liked them. One was 'The Blower's Daughter'. He asked me what I wanted to do and I told him I wanted to record an album at home.

PC: Were you familiar with his work with the James Bond movies?

DR: When I met him he hadn't started working with those. The only thing he had done at the time was 'Play Dead' with Bjork that I absolutely loved. He wrote the music. I loved strings and he loved strings so that was why we got together and he did the string arrangement to 'Amie'.

Launch.Yahoo - May 2 2004

Interview with Damien Rice

Hot Press - January 21 1998

Should we talk about the weather?

John Walshe talks to Celbridge five-piece juniper about their new single, Weatherman, and what it was about them that enticed PolyGram to sign them for six albums.

Six-album deals are as scarce as international class centre-halves these days, except if you re REM or U2. So for newcomers Juniper to land such a deal with PolyGram was quite a coup, not to mention a vote of confidence.

Not that Juniper are exactly bonnie babes either. Formed three years ago in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, they've been regulars on the live circuit in this country for some time. 1995's independently released Manna EP, was their first foray into the commercial world: a collection of acoustic-driven songs which promised much but didn't exactly set the world on fire. Undeterred, the band continued plying their trade, writing and gigging around the country, and were snapped up by the recording giant last September for a whopping six-album deal.

The first fruits of this collaboration, Weatherman , is an extremely catchy slice of polished rock, served up by a band obviously not short on confidence. In fact, you may recall that Weatherman garnered a Single of the Fortnight accolade from yours truly in the last issue of Hot Press.

By their own admission, Juniper really gelled as a band at Straffan, Co. Kildare, where all five band members shared a house, or rather an old army barracks (which also contained their own studio) for a period of 18 months.

We killed each other out there, in a sense, opines lead vocalist Dodima, a name which he invented from his own unique language. Throughout the course of the interview Dodima is a multicoloured bundle of energy, arms whirring as he emphasises every syllable with extravagant gestures, the consummate front man.

hat's really where we got to know each other, he continues. Every day we woke up and saw the same faces. You could crawl out of bed and there was a room with all our gear set up, where we could work on ideas and record if we wanted. That was our incubation period as Juniper. That was where we knitted together, got our differences out of the way and honed in on what we wanted from the band.

The five members of Juniper have since moved out of the barracks, and are now dotted throughout the city and the Celbridge area, where they still rehearse.

When you re living and working creatively with the same people it can develop into a headfuck, admits Paul Noonan, drummer, who talks a good game without displaying the intense energy rush of his fellow band member. That's why we left. It was a very intense period of writing and rehearsing. It was around that time when we started playing regularly in the DA Club, which is where we cut our teeth live.

Juniper's live performances soon attracted a rabid crop of A&R men to their shows, but it wasn't until last September when they finally signed on the dotted line. There was a lot of posturing going on but no-one had actually made any moves, recalls Paul. They [PolyGram] came to see one gig and offered us a deal the next week. I think the reason for that is because PolyGram have plenty of autonomy because of Boyzone. They have made a lot of money for the group, so they are now given that bit more freedom. A lot of the major record companies here don t have the power to sign acts autonomously they have to call people in London or New York, and that just makes the process more difficult.

Surely, though, a six-album deal is more than a little unusual for a band signing their first recording contract?

I suppose so, muses Dodima, but there are a lot of unusual things about the band in a sense. When it came to the actual deal, our management knew exactly what we wanted. What we were interested in was actually getting people within the company who we felt loved our music and believed in the band. If you don t have that, you can have a company grafting for you, but it's not really going to work.

I think we were signed for our potential, our progressive nature and our longevity, interjects Paul, modestly. It s far cooler and makes more business sense to have an act that is going to consistently produce good albums. We weren't signed for any standout this song is going to be a hit single around the world . It was more for the kind of albums that we can make.

Both band members reject the notion that Juniper are under intense pressure to come up with the goods; indeed, they feel they already have done. We have the guts of two albums worth of material, says Paul. Because we have three songwriters in the band, we always have an abundance of songs to work on and the pressure is never on one person to perform.

Both Paul and Dodima feel that their material has progressed from the acoustic, organic sound of the Manna EP and that they have grown and diversified . One of the reasons for this is that they have been given free rein in the studio.

When the time came to record, we sat down with the record company and they told us they wanted to go into the studio and experiment: to push ourselves, remembers Dodima. That was great it was like a sense of freedom. If you let people do what they really want to do, they will come up with something better than if you try to make them do something.

Listening to all three tracks on the Weatherman single confirms this. While the title track is straight-ahead rock, the B-sides, and Little Sister in particular, are not quite as straightforward and not exactly what you would expect, as the band are learning to use the studio as a creative tool. Juniper also promise that their next single, due out around April or May, will be a different kettle of fish again, and are hotly anticipating their debut album, which should hit the shelves in September.

For the moment, however, the band are hitting the highroads and by-roads, playing all over the country in record stores and in more regular venues in support of Weatherman. This is obviously an exciting, not to mention hectic, period for them.

We are doing something tangible, says Paul. We are getting out and playing, but I really love talking about what we do as well. I read about REM on their last promotional job, for New Adventures In Hi-Fi, where they took a week and did all the videos and the press in that week. I can understand that because they have kids and families. But at this age, we are mad for it, as certain Mancunians would say.

Weatherman is out now on PolyGram, and Juniper are appearing at a venue near you. See the Gig Guide for dates.

John Walshe

Bell X1 Interview

How did ye decide to reform as BellX1? Was it a hard decision?

"Emm....throwing myself back to then-it was inevitable within Juniper I suppose-we'd started to kind of work in different groups anyway, and myself and Brian were doing a lot of work, and Dave was doing a lot of his own work and stuff, so when Damien said finally that he was leaving , we said-ok lets continue. Cos we had a record deal and we had good songs, and we had a good album, and hopefully a future.

Did ye find the changeover from one name and sound to another difficult? The BellX1 sound is more relaxed, apart from the few "heavy" songs.

The album is actually far more relaxed than how we are live. I mean it's essentially some of the same people making the music, so there are similarities. I don't think anything released by Juniper was representative of the band. The b-sides kinda were, but I think we learnt a lot, in terms of sticking to your guns. In some ways we've paid for it as well, because on paper, Juniper were far more successful than we've been. But you know, I think we're much happier now that we're making the music we want to make.

The Lobby, Cork Interview

Venue:
The Lobby 
Mark McAvoy talks to Bell X1 (named after the first aircraft to break the sound barrier) lead singer and front man Paul Noonan.

Q1. You used to be known as Juniper and now you have become Bell X1. Why the name change?
Ans. The original lead singer (Dodi) left the band and we wanted to make very different music. We all wanted to get away from the way Juniper was presented.

Q2. Did Juniper’s lead singer (Dodi) leave of his own free will or was he pushed?
Ans. He just left, as he didn’t want to be in a band any more, it was as simple as that. He was a very single-minded individual. I was friends with him since I was twelve and he has always had this self-destruct, as I see it, streak in him. He still makes wonderful music but he was just not geared towards compromising and getting on with other people.

Q3. What is the main difference as you see it between Bell X1 and Juniper?
Ans. I think the singles that were released as Juniper were not particularly representative of the band. At the time we were just kind of star-struck at the notion of signing a record deal. We signed a record deal with PolyGram Ireland and they were not willing to make an album. They wanted to release a couple of singles first, [ incidentally Juniper only ever released two singles during their short career] with the result that the singles were hyped out of the water and we never had an album to back up any of the bullshit that was being spun about us. It all happened too fast. We learned a lot from that.

Rice To The Occasion

I first met Damien Rice many moons ago through a friend of a friend of a friend. At the time I must admit that I was kind of captivated by this artistic, interesting, deep young man. He was an Eco warrior, his beliefs were steadfast, honesty and integrity his primary goals. He only ate organic food and recycled everything he used. He wrote aching lyrics from his forever aching heart (he always had plenty of material because there was always a plentiful supply of girlfriends) and he played guitar at campfires in way-off fields.

He was the type of person I would have liked to have been. He cared for mankind, he cared for the earth and I thought that was, well… lovely. It was the nearest thing I ever got to being a groupie. Rice was in a band called Juniper, a relatively successful young Irish 5-piece who played electrifying gigs which were always packed to the rafters. They signed to PolyGram for a potential 6-album deal and managed to release two reasonably-well received singles, the most notable being ‘Weatherman’ (not the B*witched version). But that was four years ago and that was as far as they ever got.

Deep down Juniper were not happy berries and after the second single was released, Rice decided to jump ship. “I certainly don’t regret leaving the band,” Damien tells me. “I would look back on things I did and say ‘I wouldn’t do that again’ but if I hadn’t have done it, I wouldn’t have learned that I didn’t like doing it. I just wanted to be free and when I was signed to the record company I wasn’t free”.

The problem was Rice’s artistic freedom had been compromised. His life decisions were being made by record industry people who felt they knew better than he did. Maybe they did, if commercial success is what you’re after, but that game is not what Damien’s about. “Back then I didn’t have the confidence to believe that I could do it without a big record company behind me. Then I started thinking, you know what, record companies don’t know everything. It’s not that I know everything but they don’t either and all their marketing power and marketing push doesn’t work. When ‘Weatherman’ didn’t go into the top ten, they even went out and started buying copies of it”.
So off he went off on his lonesome, guitar strapped to his back, to busk the streets of Europe. On his return to Ireland he borrowed a bit of dough from those who would lend it, put down some tracks and sent off a demo to David Arnold (renowned James Bond and Bjork producer). Arnold liked what he heard and Damien liked what he got, a mobile studio.

Mobile, free and solo, Damien then went about setting up his own record label. This meant that he owned all his work and any profits would be his to keep. “Now if I want to record an album of mellow songs I can do it, I don’t have to worry about singles. You don’t need radio, you don’t need TV, you don’t need anything. All you need is life”.
For the past two years, his life has been ‘O’, an 11-track album recorded entirely in the mobile studio that “allowed for spontaneity”. “I don’t think it’s a sad album, I think it’s an album about sad things”. Call it what you may, heartbreakingly beautiful or over indulgent. What it is undeniable is that it mesmerises with innovative, raw talent, untampered and true.

Despite its brilliance critical reviews will always vary. Damien doesn’t stick to the usual industry protocol - he makes his own rules. As one journalist commented “To Rice’s credit he has created some solid, intense, spine tingling moments… but at two years per album will anyone be willing to wait that long?” The crux of the matter here is that Damien really couldn’t care less if people wait or not. Those who are meant to wait will. As a result of his non-consumerist attitudes a big promo blitz will not be undertaken to push the album. Realistically this could result in poor sales and a bleak financial forecast.

“I’m living perfectly comfortably right now and it’s growing all the time. I don’t think the audience is gonna shrink after the album comes out because we’ve got a small audience at the moment but it’s enough to make a very comfortable living out of. I know at the turn of a hat I could organise a Music Centre Gig, put it up on the website and within two weeks make 2 grand…. I’m not rich now… this album has cost me 10K and I’m paying for it…”.
Damien’s world is a brave new one. He is evidence that there are other ways to survive, that beating Groundhog Day isn’t always untouchable pie in the sky. “People don’t do what they really want to do because usually they’re afraid but I don’t think that’s a bad thing either cos I’m not happy. It’s not that I’m the lucky bastard who had the courage to leave university and go and create cos’ I’m still not that happy, but I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, in a way… ”

by Bianca Luykx

The Irish Times - Arts Section - April 23 2002

'From puffed Rice to wild Rice'

Damien Rice used to sing with Juniper, a loud rock band with a big light show, but just before he was due to fly to the south of France to record their début album, he quit the band. He talks to Kevin Courtney about finding his soul and his solo career.

Sometimes rock 'n' roll dreams come true, but more often than not they crash around your head like a cupboard full of weighty expectations. This is the tale of a young man who wanted to live the ultimate rock dream, but instead found himself trapped in a nightmare world of bean counters, unit shifters, chart returns and radio pluggers. He had set out to soothe the soul with honest, heartfelt rock 'n' roll, but ended up pandering to shallow showbiz tastes. He used to think he was Bono, but now he just felt like bono, endlessly clowning around in a slick rock 'n' roll circus. It was time to stop the show.

This young man went by the pseudonym of Dodi Ma, and he was the flamboyant front man of a band called Juniper. Hailing from Celbridge, Juniper were signed to PolyGram (before they were swallowed up by Universal), which proceeded to hype the fledgling act.

Three years later, Damien Rice is sitting in a coffee shop in Temple Bar, facing his nemesis, the very Irish Times rock critic who wrote a scathing review of the band. He's no longer using a ridiculous pseudonym, and he's no longer fronting a band called Juniper. He is, however, finally living a rock 'n' roll dream of sorts, and this time it's a far more relaxing, acoustic reverie.

After Juniper fell apart, Rice was expected to fade unceremoniously into obscurity. Instead, he's become one of Ireland's most popular singer-songwriters, and has sold out such venues as Vicar St and The Olympia Theatre. His debut album, simply titled O, has already gone gold. He's nominated for the Best Newcomer title in the Hot Press Awards, to be announced on Thursday; and on May 6th, he performs in Dublin Castle as part of the Heineken Green Energy Festival, alongside his mates The Frames, Mundy, and his old band mates in Juniper, who are now a very fine band called Bell X1.

Damien Rice has had a second bite of the rock 'n' roll cherry, but instead of juggling it in the air while jumping through hoops, this time he's savouring the taste and texture of sweet independence.

"I was just f--king miserable," he recalls. "I had got everything I thought I wanted. It was my dream to play the Olympia when I was younger; it was my dream to record in the likes of Windmill Lane, where U2 had recorded, and Abbey Road, where The Beatles had recorded. We were 22, 23, whatever. And so I got all those things I thought I wanted, but I was still miserable. I came off the stage at the Olympia, and everyone went backstage, but I just sat on the edge of the stage, and I nearly cried, just sitting there, my head in my hands, going, I missed the show. I missed the gig, because before I'd go on stage, there was this whole sense of, all right, go out there now and blow them away! These people have paid in to see us so... yeaahhh!"

"And it was just, I wasn't being myself at all. I had lost myself completely in the confusion of thinking that I'm supposed to be some sort of entertainer..." He feels he had no sincerity at all - "it was like Spinal Tap".

Rice partly blames himself for the over-theatrical delivery, and partly blames the record company for demanding radio-friendly songs and audience-pleasing poses. Something had to give, and it wasn't going to be the big, multinational music corporation. In early 1999, Juniper were due to fly to the south of France and record their début album with Manic Street Preachers producer Mike Hedges - all paid for by PolyGram, of course. On the eve of this dream junket, however, Rice announced that he was quitting the band.

"I went from playing the Olympia, which I thought was my dream, to busking the streets all around Europe for eight months. I had no money, I was living completely off the street, bit I was far happier. Far happier. Back then I thought I wanted to be successful, famous, whatever. Now, I absolutely do not want to famous. There's a difference between being a rock star and having music which everybody knows, I mean, everybody knows Leonard Cohen, but Leonard Cohen would walk by here and no problem, 'cos he's not a rock star."

Rice took his first faltering steps back in the Irish live circuit, playing gigs in Whelan's on Wexford Street, and attracting an increasingly devoted following to these low-key acoustic sessions. His style is not to everyone's taste: meandering often muddled lyrics; quiet, sometimes almost imperceptible guitar picking; long, storytelling gaps between songs; and a stage set which often resembles a writer's garret, with bed, chair, writing-desk, pens, books and candles as props.

Joining him onstage are Shane Fitzsimmons on bass, Tomo on drums, and chanteuse Lisa Hannigan. The impression is of a gentle troubadour. Onstage, Rice resembles some scraggly figure from long ago, who has suddenly been transported to the 21st century, and stands blinking in the harsh light of the modern world.

It's no surprise that his fans also follow The Frames, Mundy, Paddy Casey and the late Mic Christopher. He may come across as a bookish, roguish sort - his album title, O, comes from the French erotic novel (Note: it doesn't - Editor), The Story of O - but when it comes to literature, Damien admits to being a bit of an ignoramus.

"I used to fail English all the time. English was probably one of my worst subjects in school, really and truly. I hated poetry, I hated writing essays, I just didn't like English at all. I used to get Ds all the time, and it's just ironic that what I do now is write... I always remember people using the word 'angst', and I never knew what it meant. People used to say, yeah, 'this music's very angst-ridden'. And I was like, 'angst'? What is that? There's my English for you. There's your well-read poet image out the window!"

"It's just, I think I was born with some sort of... I'm constantly going to extremes... I remember through my childhood I was always spending time outdoors. I used to fish. And then I got to the stage where I was feeling bad about fishing, 'cos I became conscious of, oh, look, I'm sticking a hook into a worm here. Something changed there, and that's when girls started coming into my life. And so I had a simple, very bold, wildish, free childhood which sort of changed when I got to 13 or 14. And that's when I picked up a guitar as well. And everything just sort of changed then. I turned into a different person, a more conscious person."

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