Leading up to the announcement that Cults would be coming to NZ to play the Laneway festival in January, Cheese on Toast spoke to Madeline from the band on the phone last week – she was outside in the carpark of the venue they were due to play that night.
We chatted about the early beginnings of the band, what her step dad (founding member of White Zombie) has to say about them, Lily Allen, Ryan Gosling and Drive…
Listen to the full interview here… (15 minutes)
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.[AUDIO REMOVED AT REQUEST OF RECORD COMPANY]
UPDATE 12 OCT 2011
TRANSCRIPTION OF INTERVIEW
COT : Hello?
Madeline : Hi!
COT : Hi, how’s it goin’?
Madeline : Good, how are you?
COT : Good, good – you guys sound like you’re real busy
Madeline : Oh yeah we’re always, always, always busy (laughs)
COT : Where-abouts am I speaking to you from?
Madeline : We’re in Indianapolis right now, and I’m in the parking lot of the venue…
COT : (laughs) So have you just finished playing or are you about to?
M : We’re about to play in a couple of hours…
COT : So are you on a pretty busy touring schedule?
M: Yeah, absolutely. We’re almost three-quarters done of a 38-date tour. Then we have four days off then we head over to Europe for a month and then come back, y’know and do the cycle again…(laughs)
COT : I guess it’s like ‘be careful what you wish for’?
M: Exactly! (laughs)
COT : You must be shattered?
M: Oh yeah, I’m okay actually. We got our first bus – so it makes touring much easier; you get more sleep and time to relax…
COT: So you have your own tour bus?
M: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finally! (laughing)
COT: Does it have “Cults” written down the side of it?
M: (Laughs) We don’t own it unfortunately – I wish we did. When we get one – when we’re millionaires (laughing) Then it’ll have Cults on it! (laughing)
COT : A friend of mine, was on tour and they sent me a photo of the Iron Maiden tour plane they saw out of their plane window on the tarmac…
M : Oh my gosh – I saw that! I actually saw that about a month a go – we were flying back from Londan and we landed at JFK and the Iron Maiden plane was at one of the terminals and we were “Oh My God!!!”
I guess the fly their own plane which is kinda amazing!
COT : I guess you know you’ve made it when you’ve got you’re own plane…
M: (laughing) Exactly… we’re working on it…
COT: So tell us about the first time you and Brian jammed together – did you have any idea that things would take off like they did?
M: Oh, we definitely did not… I was kinda like, umm… he’d sit making music on his computer and I’d make up stupid songs to the music and he went “woah that sounds pretty good – we should record something” and so we were “alright we bored; we don’t have anything to do – we’ve got the weekend off – let’s go up to my stepdads house and record a couple of tracks” – and we had no expectations or goals – we were just doing it out of boredom – we recorded the songs over two weekends and I put them on my Facebook and a friend of mine sent them to Gorilla VS Bear – and they posted them and then from their blogs started posting it and it was totally unexpected and I guess kinda scary…
COT : So what does your step-dad think of it all – cos he’s like a founding member of White Zombie aye…?
M: I don’t know – he doesn’t really tell me what he thinks of it, he just offers all this like, Yoda-like advice, where he’ll say something to you that you don’t really understand and then three months later you’re like “Oh, ooookay, that’s what you’re talking about” (laughs).
He is pretty supportive though. It’s pretty funny, he’ll go on twitter and he’ll search people who tweet at us or tweet Cults and always Tweet at them…
COT: Does he talk like Yoda?
M: He sorta does (laughs) he sorta talks like this (does a raspy voice)
COT : Does he reverse the pro-nouns and verbs…
M: (laughing) Oh yeah, ‘Cults , me think that…’ Yeah he definitely does. I mean, he does not, but that would be amazing…
COT: So what did you guys think when you heard that Lilly Allen wanted to sign you?
M: The whole situation was kinda funny; it was in the first month that people were talking about those songs – people from record labels were all “hey let’s meet up…” and we got this eMail from this random email address like it was george at hotmail dot com or something like and it was like ‘hey I am working with Lily Allen and she’s starting this record label and she wants to fly you out to London’ and so we asked around, ‘does anyone know this George guy?’ – nobody had any idea who he was and no idea if it was for real or not – but we thought – ‘y’know what let’s take this free trip to London…’ so we took the plane tickets and got to the airport fully expecting we were being punk’d or something… ummm.. but we went over and met her.. oh it was really funny – our bass player at the time; his girlfriend had said that the one person he could hook up with was Lilly Allen – and then she contacted us – and so his girlfriend was all like “NO! NO! You are NOT going to London!” (laughing)
COT: (laughing)
M: But it was amazing – we went over there – and they were like not trying to force us to do anything, and even set up meetings with other record labels for us while we were there. They were just amazing people – y’know Lilly Allen has been through some shit in the music industry – so having someone knowing what it’s like running the label is an amazing thing; she’s not gonna force us to do anything… it’s all our creative decisions, basically.
COT: So what’d your live set? I read somewhere that you play with like six people on stage?
M: We’ve just narrowed it down to five people, it used to be like eight. We have a drummer, and Brian who plays MPC, keyboards and guitar and another guy who plays MPC, keyboards and guitar, a bass-player and me…
COT: will you be bringing that who set up to NZ when you come?
M: We definitely are!
COT: Have you ever been to this side of the world before?
M: Never, never! We’re really excited, but we’re not looking forward to the flight! We’re trying to book some LA dates on the way so we can split it up a bit…
COT : See if the Iron Maiden plane is available…
M: Yeah! (laughing) I can fly it!
COT : Yeah! Should be pretty easy…
M: (laughing)
COT : Umm.. i read somewhere that Brian described your live set up as more hip hop – do you know what he means by that?
M: Umm.. I think what he means.. We use a drum kit but we also have a SPD which has the actual drum samples from the record and thats kinda like the highest thing in the mix. I dunno if it really comes through as much on the record, but a lot of the drum sounds are like super hip-hop orientated beats – so I guess we pump the drums as loud as possible and make it more danceable, I would say…
COT: You guys used to be film students aye?
M: Yes…
COT: What’s the best film you have seen recently?
M: Oh we watched Drive last night – it was amazing…
COT: Oh my god – it’s so good isn’t it!!
M: It’s sooo good – and like immediately I downloaded the soundtrack – which is also amazing… We never have time to watch movies when we’re on tour – but luckily we had the night off last night, so we went to the movies which was refreshing…
COT: Yeah I saw it last week – it’s so good, yeah?
M: So good. Amazing. Our other guitar player is obsessed with Ryan Gosling and he thinks he is Ryan Gosling and after he got back from the movie he started doing pull ups on an iron gym as he got home.. (laughing)
COT: I gotta say that is the most beautiful head blowing off scene I have ever seen…
M: (laughs)
COT: (laughs)… hey it’s been a pleasure to speak you – thank you so much for your time..
M: Thank you…
COT: Good luck with the show tonight!
M: Thanks! Bye!
