Phoenix – Keeping It Cool In The Face Of Revolution (Christian Mazzala INTERVIEW)

Phoenix leapt onto the American music scene in 2009 with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, an album that garnered the band their first Grammy Award and facilitated their meteoric rise. After a multi-year quest to redefine and, in typical French fashion, revolutionize their distinctive sound, the Versailles-based alternative rock quartet returned in April with a new album, titled Bankrupt!. Featuring ten concise tracks that attempt to experiment with the classic Phoenix sound—Bankrupt! is their fifth release, after all, though just their second in the United States—the album showcases a band that has remained surprisingly humble under the scrutiny of international success and fame. Rather than selling themselves short with a rehashed, hackneyed version of their 2009 smash hit, with Bankrupt! Phoenix strives for self-improvement in offering their followers a fresh, different and altogether exciting follow-up release.

Since the springtime debut of Bankrupt!, Phoenix has endured an exciting and undoubtedly chaotic schedule. Around preparing for their largest and most anticipated North American tour to date, the band has also filmed and released a new music video for their recent single, “Trying To Be Cool,” and has kept an online photo journal while interacting one-on-one with their online community.

Glide Magazine’s Jeff DeMars recently spoke with Phoenix guitarist Christian Mazzalai about the band’s success after Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and their hectic schedule since the release of Bankrupt!. The two touch on the band’s creative process and determination to evolve musically, the organic relationship that Phoenix shares with their followers and their North American tour. Christian shows that even in the face of revolution, Phoenix stay focused on quality music and maintaining a meaningful and unique relationship with their fans.

189_Phoenix_mainimage.jpg

I want to start by asking a little bit about the history of Phoenix. I know that you guys have been around since 1999, but here in the States, your first major debut was in 2009. Can you tell me a little bit about how the band was formed and your history?

We began music when we were around twelve, in the early nineties when we were teenagers, and we kept on doing music, writing songs and when we found our way we released our songs in 2000. And since then we’ve done five albums.

Your new album, Bankrupt! has been out since April, so can you tell me a little bit about the album and how the idea for the album came about? I know from interviews that you’ve given that you used inexpensive instruments for portions of the album that you found in thrift shops and things like that, and that it’s meant to be a little more experimental than Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Is there a specific idea that the band used to shape this album? 

Uh, we had ideas but we basically threw them in the garbage because they were too predictable, you know? So what we did is just for months and months we experimented. You know in physics when they experiment, like real experiments like mathematicians. We were trying to find a new perfect equation for our music. So it was a very long process, finding a new way to write songs.

What was the writing process like for this album? 

That’s a question we ask ourselves all the time. You know, we tried to find a new strategy for writing songs. If we kept doing things the same way, it would be very boring for us. But basically with every album we try to find a new way to write songs. So for this album we experimented and recorded hours and hours of music, and then we kind of, like a big jigsaw puzzle, we had little pieces of music and we tried to put them together.

So throughout the process of writing Bankrupt!, how did you confront the issue of trying to achieve growth as a band, or trying to be experimental? Do you write for your audience, do you write for yourselves? How does that work?

We don’t write for an audience, we write just for the four of us, because if we try to please someone specifically or if we try to please anybody other than ourselves, we wouldn’t accept it artistically, it would be impossible. So we just try to please the four of us, the same as it was in the beginning. And we feel like if it’s good for us, we hope it’s going to be good for somebody else, too.

It seems like significant chunks of this album were written right here in New York City. Take “Entertainment” for example. In the Spotify commentary for Bankrupt!, you talk about how the chorus was inspired by and came from New York. What is it about New York that is special to the band? Or more generally speaking, what gives you inspiration when writing an album?

It can really be anything, you know. We don’t write songs when we are on tour because you are not linked to reality when you are on tour. You are living a crazy life and you can’t breathe, you know? So when we are trying to write songs, when we are in the city, when we’re in New York, we like to take the subway and do tours in the street. Everything can be inspiration, especially something that’s uncontrollable. And that’s what we want because the best inspiration comes from something you would never expect. For example, all the Asian melodies we have on this album, I don’t know where they came from, you know?

Phoenix won a Grammy for its previous album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and the singles “1901” and “Lisztomania” were both huge hits here in the States. How has this impacted you as a band? Did it influence the process of writing Bankrupt! at all?

No, I think it didn’t influence us. It had an impact on the world outside of us, because people looked at us differently afterwards. But I think that we didn’t change, we are still the same as we were when we began music. And that’s what we wanted, you know? We don’t want to change the four of us. But while it didn’t change us I think it changed people on the outside around us.

I see. Well it’s great when you talk to a band that has had as much success as you all have, especially here in the States, and it shows that you are really about making music and your fans and very down to earth. I find that very admirable and cool.

I don’t know if it’s cool, but it’s very crucial for us.

189_Phoenix_otherimage.jpg

Phoenix is about to set out on a pretty big North American tour, even playing Barclay’s Center here in New York. How are you preparing as a band for the tour, and what are you looking forward to about being on the road?

Being on the road is like the real world, and it’s the hard work of doing an album. To do an album is very hard. But at the end when you finish it and then share it with your friends, you share these crazy emotions. But when you’re on tour, like the real world, everything is new. It’s all much more physical, so you’re very tired, but it’s a very good tired. There’s something about being there and not controlling anything. But the next tour we are preparing we are very excited about doing something very special. Something unique, you know? Because you only live once, and we feel lucky to play all these venues, and we want to do something unique that is leisurely and ridiculous.

I saw you guys perform at the Norva in Norfolk, Virginia a few years ago, and I remember being really impressed. To that point, honestly, I hadn’t really listened to your music a whole lot, but after seeing the show I was a fan. And I remember a really impressive light show, and you guys just seemed really seasoned as a band. On this upcoming tour you’re going to be playing some much larger venues than the last time around. How do you deal with playing a larger stadium versus a smaller venue? Are you excited or nervous about that, or is this nothing new for you?

No, we are excited because we love to discover new things you know? We love to play a big venue and then the day after that play a very small venue. When you play a large venue you are bigger, too, and you have bigger lights. So what we try to do is to avoid all the clichés of the arena tour band, you know? Like, we always kind of, we call them fireworks, like Cirque du Soleil vibe, and we try to avoid that. I mean there are so many things you can do in a big venue, and we want to do something very deep and very powerful, but with significance. We want it to be something very elegant and powerful.

Excellent, it sounds like it’s going to be a great show and a great tour. So, it seems like as a band you all have a fairly close relationship with your fans and your followers. On your website you keep a blog and you have done chats with fans using social media. Can you tell me about the relationship between Phoenix and its followers? What role do your fans play in your music?

I don’t know what their role is. We try to do it without any marketing. But all the things we are doing are controlled completely by us, on our website. What we try to avoid is all this kind of, what we call record company marketing and tools, you know. So we try just to do some things, ideas that that come just from us. We really try to do kind of a natural thing so that there’s no one between the listener, the people who love our music, and us. And we can, if we have an idea we can do it, like on our last album we gave “1901” away for free. We got the idea the day before and we did it without any prep. It was not supposed to be a single but all the people on the web were crazy about it. Like that, we want it all to come very naturally where nothing is planned.

It’s really great that you have an organic relationship with your fans, and that you are able to eliminate the middleman and have a real one-on-one relationship with your fans. 

Yeah, it’s very important, very important.

Your most recent single, “Trying To Be Cool,” was just released earlier this month, and you guys have a video out for it that is absolutely hilarious and entertaining. Can you tell me a little bit about what the song is about and how that’s reflected in the video?

It’s kind of clear for us, it’s not about being cool it’s about the idea of trying. And this video was done in Barcelona with a Spanish director called CANADA, and we wanted it to be a live performance. So everything is live with two cameras and we play live. Everything is live, and it was a very crazy moment for us, but it was so much fun to do. But it was it was like twenty videos in one, but we loved it. We loved the experience.

Was the whole video done in one take? How rehearsed was it?

Yeah. One take but with two cameras you know? But one take, yeah.

And who came up with the idea for the video? Was it you guys as a band, or was it CANADA, or?

Well we wanted a performance, and then they had the idea, CANADA initially had the idea.

Going back to Bankrupt!, what is Phoenix most proud of about this album, and what are your plans going forward?

We are excited about playing all of these songs. We experimented for two years to be able to play them live. They are kind of complex, but it’s a huge challenge that we cherish. And for the future, from now until the end of the year we are just focused on providing a unique show with some kind of French Revolution aspect, so that’s what we’re doing. Further in the future we don’t know, but we are really focused on now until the end of the year. We are really working on making the live show something unique. I think we improve every night a little bit, we are working a lot to deliver.

Related Content

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter