CRUSHER Magazine: Feature: Lost Prophets

Eric V. White: Mr. Stuart Richardson, good evening. How are you? Just getting through with soundcheck?

Stuart Richardson: I’m really good. Soundcheck. Everything got back kind of late, but we should be all right. No worries.

EVW: Think you’re all set for tonight?

SR: Oh yeah mate, we’re ready. Real fuckin’ pysched. It’s gonna be fuckin’ awesome.

EVW: Well, you guys have a killer album. How’s it been touring in support of it so
far? I know that you’ve been touring with Hoobastank and Imarobot. Is this your first time touring with them…

SR: Thank you. So, far touring’s been awesome. Before we were doing some gigs with Metallica, which was fucking awesome. We grew up listening to those guys, so to play with them was incredible.
We also did some shows with the White Stripes earlier too. They’re also pretty cool to chill with. Really good mates. Now we’re doing this MTV Campus Invasion Tour with Hoobastank and Imarobot.
We were with Hoobstank before, you know. Really cool bunch of guys. Lots of fun to be around, but they’re a fucking awesome band too. We just have a laugh at all this. This is such a great time for us, to be fuckin’ touring and shit. We’re just really glad.

EVW: Now, the band’s been around since ’96, right? And you’ve been with them
for four years now. Is there anything that the band has changed with regard to touring over the years? More exercise, perhaps? Recording new material while on tour? Haha, more sleep? I kind of doubt that last one.

SR: Shit, believe me. Uh, I joined in 1998, so it’s actually been about six years that I’ve been with the band. Let’s see, I’m 27 and everyone else is around same age 25-27.
Me, personally, and actually the whole band, we record and think up new music when we can. If I wasn’t doing this I’d probably be in the studio, engineering. I went to school for it and shit. I just don’t like to fuck around really. Whenever I go back home, I produce albums of my friends’ bands. It just excites me to be involved in music, all aspects.
Getting trashed on tour isn’t my thing at all, you know. We’ve been touring four months now. And I’m the only one who drinks in the band, you know. I’ve only been drunk twice. It’s not cool to be drunk on tour, it’s not cool to get drunk period. But on tour, you wake up the next day and you feel like shit and they have to go play and it’s fucking not worth it. Maybe when I was 18, but I’m fucking 27 years old mate and I’ve got a girlfriend and a kid. I can’t do that shit now.
In the UK you start drinking when you're stupid young. It really doesn’t make a lot of fucking sense. But as far as getting smashed, it’s not my thing. I’m not a rock star. I’m just a regular guy who makes music. That’s it, the music. All it’s about.

EVW: What are the best and worst things about being on tour? Missing family? Do you all have girlfriends?

SR: The worst thing is when you get ill. If one guy gets sick, everyone’s fucked.There are twelve people on the bus, so you’ve got to be careful about how you take care of yourself. I haven’t been sick in a month, but I know my time is coming soon.
The other thing is being away from friends and family and shit. Lee is the only one who’s single, but my girlfriend has been on tour with me on and off. When she’s here, it’s fucking awesome.
And the schedule is fucking insane. You never get any fucking sleep, but you know what, it’s fucking wonderful. It really is. I just really enjoy being on tour, mate. When you’re on tour, record sales and whatever don’t matter. You’re just concerned about doing a good show.

EVW: Okay, you’re signed to a major label. Since you all got the deal, do you miss anything from before?

SR: The only thing I miss is the peoples’ perception of the band. When we started out, everyone thought we were a punk band. We were signed to a tiny-ass label, playing hardcore shit…We wanted to be a big band and we wanted to be on MTV and we wanted to get our music and message out to more people. You have to get signed to a major label for that to happen. And people think once that’s happened, the music changes. You sell out and shit. Fuck that. We play the same songs. The songs that are on the album are all songs that we liked and wanted to play. We’re the same fucking band. We’re still a bunch of guys from Pontypridd with no fucking money, just happy to get a gig, man. I’m not bitter or anything. I kind of fucking expect people to try and tear you down. I just enjoy playing my music and if someone doesn’t like it, fuck it.

EVW: Well, a lot of people seem to like your music. Start Something is blowing up.

SR: Thank you.

EVW: The debut, thefakesoundofprogress, was fairly popular here too, but I heard people back home weren’t too receptive to it. What’s been the reaction back in Pontypridd to Start Something? Do you even care? Are you surprised by its success?

SR: The new album has taken off more than we thought it would. It’s really blown our fucking minds. With the debut, we thought we’d sell about 3,000 copies and we could make a decent living off of it. It went on to sell 200,000. Start Something has been fucking unbelievable. We would have never expected this success. You know what, mate? We’re cynical about the music business. It’s all about what’s hot at the moment. Today, it’s all about how a band is packaged, rather than if they’re really talented. And then your hot shit for a little while and then everyone forgets about you. We know how it fucking is, we’re just happy to be going through what we’re going through right now. We just play the kind of music that we like to play.

EVW: How would you define the band’s sound/style? Or does that kind of
question piss you off?

SR: No, it doesn’t piss me off at all. We were a bunch of fuckin’ kids and we had no idea what cool was, because there was no scene where we’re from. We loved Duran Duran as much as we loved Slayer and as much as we loved Jeff Buckley. We all grew up listening to everything. Kids today listen to the same shit and they’re afraid to listen to anything they don’t hear on MTV or the radio and that’s fucking sad. The emo shit sounds boring now, at least to me, but everyone loves it. They all sound the fucking same.
That’s the thing--trends. I’m not into trends mate. I’m a music lover, a fan of music. All of it.

EVW: What was your approach to recording this album in comparison to the last?

SR: The last one was done in a week. With this album, the record company put as much money behind it as they wanted and they said go make an album. And we wound up making the best fucking record we’ve ever made so far. It took us like 6 months with mixing, but it was fucking awesome.

EVW: Eric Valentine, why was he chosen to produce it?

SR: He fucking rocks man. We picked him because he did Queens of the Stone Age and then he’s also done Smashmouth. If you can do dirty and scuzzy and then clean and polished, you can do anything, you can do our sound. What I liked about him too was that he didn’t push us in any one direction. I respected his opinion, because he respected our opinions. On the last album, we weren’t happy with the producer. We actually didn’t fucking like him at all. We argued a lot and it showed, because the last album wasn’t nearly as good as this one.

EVW: So, as far as musical influences…

SR: To be totally honest, anything that sounds good really. We’re into--the heavy shit like Slayer, Anthrax, but we love softer shit: Duran Duran, pop punk. We’re not into scenes, mate. We’re into the music. Music should be more than a fashion statement. The kid who wears a fucking Donnas t-shirt they bought at Hot Topic or whatever. They shouldn’t wear it, because it looks cool, because it’s the “in-thing” to do. They should wear it because they fucking love the music.

EVW: Who have been your favorite bands to play with so far and is there
anyone dead or alive you wish you could play with?

SR: Metallica, without a doubt. We met them when we did the Big Day Out in Australia. Fucking James Hetfield came to the show and said he liked us. That was fucking awesome.

Dead or alive? Hmmm--Elvis. I really have no idea mate. Maybe Jim Morrison, just to see how fucking tripped out he was.

EVW: So, tonight’s show…

SR: We’re fucking ready man. It’s gonna be awesome.

EVW: Is this your first time playing in Orlando?

SR: I think so. All I know about Florida is that we’re in here. Florida is Florida to us. It’s fucking nice down here though. It gets blurry after a while, playing here in the states.

We’re on about 8:30pm and then its Fort Myers after. I know you’re from New York. We should be back in Jersey and New York that area in about a month. Shows there are always fucking awesome. New York has always been great for us. The kids are either so blasé or they fucking love you. And we’ve always gotten a huge fucking response.

EVW: Is tonight at on a campus or in an arena? How do you prepare for shows?

SR: This is an MTV Campus show. Prepare? We just go in and fucking jam, just make sure we’re on top for our shit.

EVW: And is there any difference between playing on a campus and playing in
an arena or stadium?

SR: We don’t really play stadiums or arenas, actually. We’ve been playing smaller venues, more intimate so we can really connect with the crowds, just trying to win over as many fans as possible. A lot of these shows are free. We just want to get our messages out man. That’s all.

EVW: Well, I know you all have about a month rest at the end of April. What do
you all plan to do during that time?

SR: No mate, we go back to the UK to do some press and then some more gigs. It never ends man. It never ends, but do we have four days off in July. But other than that, we’re gonna be out for a year and half. Whenever we get the chance, we’ll be doing b-sides and recording new material.

EVW: New material…

SR: Yeah, new album, hopefully, next year some time, you can expect to hear a new album from us. I don’t want to say anything yet though. When it’s all over, this tour though, we’re just gonna just sit down and fucking play PlayStation and watch DVDs and chill with our friends.

Back home people just want to be bitchy all the time. They always want new shit from us. The first album was rushed and that sort of why it wasn’t that good. We need to take some time to think about it. After this tour is over, we take some time off and start thinking about stuff. Besides, we don’t want people to start fucking getting sick of us. Look at Blink-182. They played every-fucking-where and then people got sick of them. They took some time off and wrote some new shit and now everybody’s ready to hear them again. We want to be at this for a long time.

EVW: How long do you see yourselves doing this?

SR: Our plan was to do this until we had to get real jobs…We didn’t write songs to get signed. Who knows, maybe 20, 30 years. Look at the Chili Peppers, they started out playing punk with socks on their cocks. Now they’re seen as this big rock band. It’s fucking amazing. And they’ve always remained true to themselves, but they always reinvented themselves. Hopefully, the kind of people we are, we’ll always changing our style, but, you know, staying true to who we are and our music.

	LOST PROPHETS By Eric V. White	LINKS: lostprophets.com
	If ever there were a success story about rising up from obscurity into stardom, it would have to be the Welsh rock band The Lost Prophets. Hailing from the tiny, industrial town of Pontypridd, their life choices were limited: getting drunk, hanging out, getting into fights or the torturous life of slaving away in mines and factories. But motivated by their lack of apathy and a desire to break free of the mold, they formed a band. After playing their asses off for anyone who would listen, they finally scraped together enough money -- 4,000 pounds -- to put together a demo. Little did they know, way back in 1996, where that demo would take them.
That first recording, the ironically titled thefakesoundofprogress (2000) -- done in just a week -- went on to sell over 100,000 copes in the U.S. and went Gold in the U.K. Propped up by the U.K. media as the “next big thing” and “the band most likely to break America”, it was the last thing the six young lads from Pontypridd expected. Just as quickly as they had become one of the new sensations of the rock music scene, scores of fans, that they had worked so hard to win, were now branding them as sellouts. After doing Ozzfest 2001, almost one year after the release of thefakesoundofprogress, they were met back home not with the fanfare associated with being mighty, musical warriors who conquered the seemingly impenetrable American music scene, rather, their countrymen speared them with such invectives as “arrogant”, “skate-hunks” and worse still, a “nu-metal boy band”. Most bands would have crumbled at this point, but driven by their love of music and their fear of returning to the doldrums of Pontypridd, they dutifully returned to their basement studio, this time with Sony Inc. backing them. After six months of deliberation, blood, sweat and tears, they forged together Start Something, a title that reflects the band’s fighting spirit. But now some three months after the release date, the title has become indicative of something more than just fighting spirit. Start Something has, in effect, become symbolic of the real start of the Lost Prophets’ career. The hit single, “Last Train Home” has been a mainstay on television and radio for weeks. They have now won respect on both sides of the Atlantic. And they’re ripping up stages left and right on MTV’s Campus Invasion Tour, a tour that three years ago, the band would have never expected to be on. Hours away from the next gig on that tour -- Orlando, Florida -- I caught up with bassist Stuart Richardson to chat about the band’s meteoric ascent, his personal pet peeves, and what to expect from the Lost Prophets in the future:
Eric V. White: Mr. Stuart Richardson, good evening. How are you? Just getting through with soundcheck? Stuart Richardson: I’m really good. Soundcheck. Everything got back kind of late, but we should be all right. No worries. EVW: Think you’re all set for tonight? SR: Oh yeah mate, we’re ready. Real fuckin’ pysched. It’s gonna be fuckin’ awesome. EVW: Well, you guys have a killer album. How’s it been touring in support of it so far? I know that you’ve been touring with Hoobastank and Imarobot. Is this your first time touring with them… SR: Thank you. So, far touring’s been awesome. Before we were doing some gigs with Metallica, which was fucking awesome. We grew up listening to those guys, so to play with them was incredible. We also did some shows with the White Stripes earlier too. They’re also pretty cool to chill with. Really good mates. Now we’re doing this MTV Campus Invasion Tour with Hoobastank and Imarobot. We were with Hoobstank before, you know. Really cool bunch of guys. Lots of fun to be around, but they’re a fucking awesome band too. We just have a laugh at all this. This is such a great time for us, to be fuckin’ touring and shit. We’re just really glad. EVW: Now, the band’s been around since ’96, right? And you’ve been with them for four years now. Is there anything that the band has changed with regard to touring over the years? More exercise, perhaps? Recording new material while on tour? Haha, more sleep? I kind of doubt that last one. SR: Shit, believe me. Uh, I joined in 1998, so it’s actually been about six years that I’ve been with the band. Let’s see, I’m 27 and everyone else is around same age 25-27. Me, personally, and actually the whole band, we record and think up new music when we can. If I wasn’t doing this I’d probably be in the studio, engineering. I went to school for it and shit. I just don’t like to fuck around really. Whenever I go back home, I produce albums of my friends’ bands. It just excites me to be involved in music, all aspects. Getting trashed on tour isn’t my thing at all, you know. We’ve been touring four months now. And I’m the only one who drinks in the band, you know. I’ve only been drunk twice. It’s not cool to be drunk on tour, it’s not cool to get drunk period. But on tour, you wake up the next day and you feel like shit and they have to go play and it’s fucking not worth it. Maybe when I was 18, but I’m fucking 27 years old mate and I’ve got a girlfriend and a kid. I can’t do that shit now. In the UK you start drinking when you're stupid young. It really doesn’t make a lot of fucking sense. But as far as getting smashed, it’s not my thing. I’m not a rock star. I’m just a regular guy who makes music. That’s it, the music. All it’s about. EVW: What are the best and worst things about being on tour? Missing family? Do you all have girlfriends? SR: The worst thing is when you get ill. If one guy gets sick, everyone’s fucked.There are twelve people on the bus, so you’ve got to be careful about how you take care of yourself. I haven’t been sick in a month, but I know my time is coming soon. The other thing is being away from friends and family and shit. Lee is the only one who’s single, but my girlfriend has been on tour with me on and off. When she’s here, it’s fucking awesome. And the schedule is fucking insane. You never get any fucking sleep, but you know what, it’s fucking wonderful. It really is. I just really enjoy being on tour, mate. When you’re on tour, record sales and whatever don’t matter. You’re just concerned about doing a good show. EVW: Okay, you’re signed to a major label. Since you all got the deal, do you miss anything from before? SR: The only thing I miss is the peoples’ perception of the band. When we started out, everyone thought we were a punk band. We were signed to a tiny-ass label, playing hardcore shit…We wanted to be a big band and we wanted to be on MTV and we wanted to get our music and message out to more people. You have to get signed to a major label for that to happen. And people think once that’s happened, the music changes. You sell out and shit. Fuck that. We play the same songs. The songs that are on the album are all songs that we liked and wanted to play. We’re the same fucking band. We’re still a bunch of guys from Pontypridd with no fucking money, just happy to get a gig, man. I’m not bitter or anything. I kind of fucking expect people to try and tear you down. I just enjoy playing my music and if someone doesn’t like it, fuck it. EVW: Well, a lot of people seem to like your music. Start Something is blowing up. SR: Thank you. EVW: The debut, thefakesoundofprogress, was fairly popular here too, but I heard people back home weren’t too receptive to it. What’s been the reaction back in Pontypridd to Start Something? Do you even care? Are you surprised by its success? SR: The new album has taken off more than we thought it would. It’s really blown our fucking minds. With the debut, we thought we’d sell about 3,000 copies and we could make a decent living off of it. It went on to sell 200,000. Start Something has been fucking unbelievable. We would have never expected this success. You know what, mate? We’re cynical about the music business. It’s all about what’s hot at the moment. Today, it’s all about how a band is packaged, rather than if they’re really talented. And then your hot shit for a little while and then everyone forgets about you. We know how it fucking is, we’re just happy to be going through what we’re going through right now. We just play the kind of music that we like to play. EVW: How would you define the band’s sound/style? Or does that kind of question piss you off? SR: No, it doesn’t piss me off at all. We were a bunch of fuckin’ kids and we had no idea what cool was, because there was no scene where we’re from. We loved Duran Duran as much as we loved Slayer and as much as we loved Jeff Buckley. We all grew up listening to everything. Kids today listen to the same shit and they’re afraid to listen to anything they don’t hear on MTV or the radio and that’s fucking sad. The emo shit sounds boring now, at least to me, but everyone loves it. They all sound the fucking same. That’s the thing--trends. I’m not into trends mate. I’m a music lover, a fan of music. All of it. EVW: What was your approach to recording this album in comparison to the last? SR: The last one was done in a week. With this album, the record company put as much money behind it as they wanted and they said go make an album. And we wound up making the best fucking record we’ve ever made so far. It took us like 6 months with mixing, but it was fucking awesome. EVW: Eric Valentine, why was he chosen to produce it? SR: He fucking rocks man. We picked him because he did Queens of the Stone Age and then he’s also done Smashmouth. If you can do dirty and scuzzy and then clean and polished, you can do anything, you can do our sound. What I liked about him too was that he didn’t push us in any one direction. I respected his opinion, because he respected our opinions. On the last album, we weren’t happy with the producer. We actually didn’t fucking like him at all. We argued a lot and it showed, because the last album wasn’t nearly as good as this one. EVW: So, as far as musical influences… SR: To be totally honest, anything that sounds good really. We’re into--the heavy shit like Slayer, Anthrax, but we love softer shit: Duran Duran, pop punk. We’re not into scenes, mate. We’re into the music. Music should be more than a fashion statement. The kid who wears a fucking Donnas t-shirt they bought at Hot Topic or whatever. They shouldn’t wear it, because it looks cool, because it’s the “in-thing” to do. They should wear it because they fucking love the music. EVW: Who have been your favorite bands to play with so far and is there anyone dead or alive you wish you could play with? SR: Metallica, without a doubt. We met them when we did the Big Day Out in Australia. Fucking James Hetfield came to the show and said he liked us. That was fucking awesome. Dead or alive? Hmmm--Elvis. I really have no idea mate. Maybe Jim Morrison, just to see how fucking tripped out he was. EVW: So, tonight’s show… SR: We’re fucking ready man. It’s gonna be awesome. EVW: Is this your first time playing in Orlando? SR: I think so. All I know about Florida is that we’re in here. Florida is Florida to us. It’s fucking nice down here though. It gets blurry after a while, playing here in the states. We’re on about 8:30pm and then its Fort Myers after. I know you’re from New York. We should be back in Jersey and New York that area in about a month. Shows there are always fucking awesome. New York has always been great for us. The kids are either so blasé or they fucking love you. And we’ve always gotten a huge fucking response. EVW: Is tonight at on a campus or in an arena? How do you prepare for shows? SR: This is an MTV Campus show. Prepare? We just go in and fucking jam, just make sure we’re on top for our shit. EVW: And is there any difference between playing on a campus and playing in an arena or stadium? SR: We don’t really play stadiums or arenas, actually. We’ve been playing smaller venues, more intimate so we can really connect with the crowds, just trying to win over as many fans as possible. A lot of these shows are free. We just want to get our messages out man. That’s all. EVW: Well, I know you all have about a month rest at the end of April. What do you all plan to do during that time? SR: No mate, we go back to the UK to do some press and then some more gigs. It never ends man. It never ends, but do we have four days off in July. But other than that, we’re gonna be out for a year and half. Whenever we get the chance, we’ll be doing b-sides and recording new material. EVW: New material… SR: Yeah, new album, hopefully, next year some time, you can expect to hear a new album from us. I don’t want to say anything yet though. When it’s all over, this tour though, we’re just gonna just sit down and fucking play PlayStation and watch DVDs and chill with our friends. Back home people just want to be bitchy all the time. They always want new shit from us. The first album was rushed and that sort of why it wasn’t that good. We need to take some time to think about it. After this tour is over, we take some time off and start thinking about stuff. Besides, we don’t want people to start fucking getting sick of us. Look at Blink-182. They played every-fucking-where and then people got sick of them. They took some time off and wrote some new shit and now everybody’s ready to hear them again. We want to be at this for a long time. EVW: How long do you see yourselves doing this? SR: Our plan was to do this until we had to get real jobs…We didn’t write songs to get signed. Who knows, maybe 20, 30 years. Look at the Chili Peppers, they started out playing punk with socks on their cocks. Now they’re seen as this big rock band. It’s fucking amazing. And they’ve always remained true to themselves, but they always reinvented themselves. Hopefully, the kind of people we are, we’ll always changing our style, but, you know, staying true to who we are and our music.