One listen to Britain’s Hard-Fi and one band immediately comes to mind – The Clash. Although Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon fused British punk into a political agenda with shades of reggae, Hard-Fi has taken their roots based British sound into the new century. In the midst of their latest assault on America, Glide spoke with Hard-Fi guitarist Ross Phillips in Florida who reflected on what the band’s secret to success on these U.S. shores might be…
“It’s about putting in the hours,” Phillips explains. “It’s such a big place so you have to tour it and have to keep at it. You can’t pop over for a couple of weeks every six months but you’ve got to spend a lot of time here and reach out all the time and do promo and set out to break it. But you’ve got to have the tunes.”
And Hard-Fi most certainly does have the tunes. The band is the baby of singer/songwriter Richard Archer, who has flirted with breaking into the big time before, most notably with his former band Contempo. “It was the wrong time for a guitar band so that went belly up,” is the quintessentially English way Ross sums up his bandmate’s previous foray into the music industry.
But the story of Hard-Fi’s album isn’t your traditional, ‘oh yeah, we had weeks in a swanky studio and decided to let the polished producer put his imprint over the finished product’ either. Instead, out of the adversity of living in an unfashionable part of London comes a tale of ingenuity and initiative. The band is based in Staines, a town probably best known as being on the flight path into Heathrow – airplanes literally roar their disdain towards you – and for being the “home” to Ali G. It’s hardly surprising then that the locals haven’t been inspired to make magnificent music.
“In Staines, there’s no music scene to speak of,” bemoans Ross. “There’s one record shop and that mainly sells DVDs. There’s no rehearsal rooms or venues. There’s nothing, really. The first bookshop only opened a couple of years ago! We were left to do our own thing and listen to what music we liked and not what was fucking cool. Because there’s no rehearsal rooms we drove forty minutes into town and spent petrol money, which was fifty quid for six hours and then you had to get back so we rented out what used to be a taxi office and got in there every night and that’s how we recorded the album.”
Incredibly, if you think using a taxi office is unorthodox, that’s merely the tip of this particular iceberg. Hard-Fi could also be found mixing what would become Stars Of CCTV in bedrooms, pubs, and even their producer’s car. Did this have the desired effect?
“Yeah, totally! Just by using what we had, we got it done,” answers Phillips.” We had no money, we signed to this tiny label of Warren Clarke’s and he believed in us and helped us along. It made us more creative by having limited amounts of shit microphones. We got a massive reverb sound on the drums just by keeping the door open.”
Talk about rags to riches. Hard-Fi has gone from keeping the door open to now having a hit record that opens doors. A year ago, at Austin’s South by Southwest Music Conference, the quartet was largely unknown even in the United Kingdom. 600,000 sales later it’s a different story. Stars of CCTV provides instant satisfaction with its mélange of genres and it has been recognized with a Mercury Music Prize nominatio. None of this could have hurt the band’s profile – despite Phillips’s laissez-faire attitude towards being in the hunt for Brit awards. “We’re not bothered at all. We had a laugh, had a drink…”
And shared something with Gillian Anderson?
“Yeah, I had this massive cigar, passed it on and turned around and Gillian Anderson had a puff on it!”
But it’s not all about smoking with Agent Scully. Hard-Fi are unafraid to criss-cross musical eras and styles. The obvious reference point of course has been The Clash.
“We love The Clash! We’re not ashamed to say that,” Phillips admits. “But we love so much other stuff like hip-hop, reggae, dub and rock. We draw a lot from AC/DC, Massive Attack and Gorillaz are a good example of a great band that take different sounds and combine them. We’re not afraid to use any of those influences.”
Back in Britain, these influences resulted in an old fashioned rise to the top. Indeed, the album, originally released last summer in the UK, re-entered the charts at the beginning of 2006 and reached the pinnacle of No. 1 a few weeks later. Ross, you sense, couldn’t be happier about the softly-softly approach. “People have slowly found out about us and that’s a natural progression rather than going straight in at number one. I prefer it to be like that rather than it all being based on hype.”
Hype? You couldn’t possibly be referring to your polar opposites, the Arctic Monkeys, could you?
“Ha ha! Good luck to them, I’m happy for them but it’s mad how they’re everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it, literally every magazine, every paper you look at, there they are. I heard they wouldn’t do any press either. Have they a future? I hope so. To be honest, I haven’t even heard the album. I like the singles but apparently, the album is very good and so is their live show and it’s not all hype. People haven’t said ‘it wasn’t as good as I thought’ but rather it was fucking brilliant.”
We’ll put the fictional Hard-Fi vs. Arctic Monkeys showdown on the back burner for now. Ross prefers to concentrate on the latest landmark event in Hard-Fi’s world. Specifically, the five sell out shows in May at one of London’s biggest and most hallowed venues – Brixton Academy. The band is in incredible company as only Bob Dylan, Massive Attack, The Prodigy and, er, The Clash have achieved this five for five accolade. London is clearly calling…
“To do one show would be fucking great! I remember about a year ago, we did an XFM Winter Wonderland concert and there were four bands playing and we tried to imagine that being for us and now we’re doing five nights in a row. The bands that have done it are in a different league to us and have produced great albums but hopefully we’ll get there soon.”
Hard-Fi will surely be getting there in a limo, not a taxi.
