Chords for Cocteau Twins 1996 Interview

[Fm] you know, oh God that looks terrible, because it was just after Dune, which was a real flop
and David Lynch was like a bit of a nobody at the time, it was like, oh Blue Veil was
going [Ab] to be a terrible film, of course, like [E] when we turned it down, who is it, it turns
out to be one of the greatest films ever made.
With a fantastic soundtrack, yeah.
And there we are, with a large egg on the plate.
I saw the, I went and did a set report on Judge Dredd and I saw, you know, a compilation
of clips and it looked, it did look amazing, one minute thirty [Em] seconds worth of clips,
but in fact they're taking every ten [G] seconds worth of goodness out of that film and stuck
it together, so it's even a one minute thirty film, that's what I'm trying to say.
It's interesting isn't it?
Not really.
No, no, it's not that interesting.
Is that an area you'd like to go into more?
Yeah I think so, you know, I definitely think, I mean people have said it over the years
on and on and on [F] that our music would be very suitable, you know, for cinematic [N] _ _ expansions
and I think, _ well I don't know where [Gm] that came from, but I got lost for a word didn't
Well anyway, let's go back.
So where [N] do we catch you guys at at the moment then?
Since the post 4AD period, what happened there?
I mean you always associated what you did with 4AD and suddenly_
You did, maybe.
Yeah, no one.
I didn't, I certainly didn't.
So what, I mean you don't have to go into the nitty gritty details of what went wrong
but how have you changed since that period?
Has there been a shift in emphasis?
_ _ I just think we take better care of ourselves, actually.
I mean a lot of stuff went down, we learned a hell of a lot being on that label because
well for a start we didn't have a manager so there was no one, _ you know, being a buffer
between people _ and _ so everything was very, it just got very personal.
Yeah, because it was like, in the early days it was a family oriented label wasn't it?
You didn't need a manager because you seemed to do everything for the record.
It seemed like that on the outside but it wasn't like that at all.
It wasn't like that at all.
You know, we were not specifically friendly with any of the groups on [Em] there and I think
the whole 4AD thing was blown out [E] of all proportion.
It got perceived as this sort of communistic ideal of everybody looking after each other
and the success of one _ benefiting the [N] development of another.
I just think that's rubbish at the end of the day.
It doesn't work.
Yeah, sure.
And we suffered as a result of it and our communication as a group was pretty useless,
I have to be said.
The material coming out at that time was still pretty of the highest order.
I mean, it wasn't affecting what you were writing.
No, I think very few things do, _ apparently enough.
And what about Sins, do you feel liberated since you're free of them?
_ _ Well, we're more free of ourselves, _ which [E] is, I don't know, I assume that's a bit of
an odd thing to say and I'm not sure how to explain myself there.
It's over to Simon! _
Well, the irony was that people assumed that we had so much control at 4AD.
We have much more now than [F] we ever had before.
[Em] Much more.
Almost too much.
It's like you have to check every single photograph and picture and this [B] and that.
[G] It's a bit of a pain sometimes, but it's much better to be like that, to have things turning
up, which you didn't realise was there.
Sure, of course.
Before this interview, my hair was [N] _
_ combed that way, but you wouldn't have it, so it
had to be combed that way.
It's that kind of thing, isn't it?
It's real important stuff.
Yeah, not really, no, but I'll just go along with you just for the sake of the interview.
Now, there's a mass of equipment here, which we don't expect to normally see.
We kind of think of you as a three-piece, if that's the right way to look at it.
Of course, the last tour there was a bundle of you on that stage, but this is currently
a five-piece.
[E] Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is, at the moment, that's what [G] we want to do.
I mean, we could do things, just the three of us, but you have to think, in the studio,
[E] we do play a lot of instruments together.
There's a lot of pianos, there's acoustic guitars, electric [F] guitars, maybe two or three
basses on each track.
It's impossible to [N] even try to recreate that.
I mean, even with seven people, we could have had a couple more, you know, to play
the songs like they are on the record, but we're not at that stage just now where we
want to recreate the album.
We just want to sort of do something completely different.
It always felt kind of like a studio project.
Do you actually enjoy playing live?
Is it something_ Oh, yeah.
I mean, nobody's got a gun to our head.
We really want to do it when we do it.
We don't do it that often compared to, you know, other bands, _ _ _ _ _ _ but_
By the time you do it again, you're so excited, because you're tired of the studio life, you're
tired of that one existence, and you need_
You're tired of each other. _
Well_
Oh, no, you are at the end of the tour.
We are at the end of the tour.
We certainly were at the end of the last one.
Seven months we was away, and that's the longest we've ever done.
How do you feel about the whole project?
Do you feel good, do you feel up about it?
Yeah, really good.
[G] I think we're writing better music than [B] we've_
It's the best [Eb] music we've ever done.
I think it just gets better and better.
[Fm] _ Well, that's a very positive way of describing it.
You've got a place in the forest today, haven't you?
[Gm]
That's why this equipment's here, in fact.
In fact, yeah.
[Am] Not acoustically, but [Em] just as [Fm] a band, yeah.
And what is that?
It's a track called Seekers Who Are Lovers.
_ OK, so after the break, you'll be able to see the Cocteauxs performing Seekers Who Are Lovers.
Stay where you are.
[N] _