----------------------------------------------------- OCTOBER 10, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: London Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/homeentertainment/story/0,12830,1059381,00.html Yes man: Belle and Sebastian By Will Hodgkinson Belle and Sebastian used to be the perfect indie band. They self-released their first album, they liked the 1960s, they loved the Smiths and they all held down day jobs as their fame and popularity increased. The fact that they hardly ever gave interviews or had their photographs taken helped create a vision of enigmatic self-sufficiency, and their leader Stuart Murdoch's job as a caretaker for a church hall added a touch of wholesome worth to the picture. But now all that has changed. Murdoch is, in reality, a heavy rock-loving technophile who loves nothing more than watching a DVD on his high-powered laptop after a hard day's recording. He's also given up his position as caretaker so that he can dedicate himself to the pop life. "I've had a vaguely glamorous six to eight months and I have to say, I've been quite enjoying it," says Murdoch, who is neither shy nor fay, but clearly robust. "Now I want to see some of the traps that other bands fall into before I die." At least Murdoch hasn't given up his caretaker's flat at the back of the Glasgow church hall. He is still on friendly terms with his former employers - he pops his head round the door of the hall to say hello to the pensioners who are enjoying a coffee morning on the day we visit him - and he is back at the small, sparsely furnished flat after completing Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Belle and Sebastian's fifth album and their most accomplished, complete with orchestral flourishes and a professional sheen courtesy of producer Trevor Horn. Its release coincides with the growth of a cult surrounding the band, which has resulted in unexpectedly huge followings in Spain and Brazil. "We don't know how that happened," says Murdoch. "I always feel that we put a record out and nothing happens, but that obviously isn't the case. It does make you feel like a proper group, though." The first music Murdoch got into as a teenager growing up in Ayr was heavy metal. "I liked Rainbow and Deep Purple, but specifically AC/DC, Thin Lizzy and Status Quo. AC/DC's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is surprisingly good, and it's funny that Bon Scott's subtleties were lost on me when I was young." Bon Scott was AC/DC's first singer, who died from too much wild living in 1980. Did he have subtleties? "Well, some of his songs are about as subtle as a toilet seat, but he's slightly more playful and bluesy than you realise. Because they hadn't made it for a while and he was an older guy, you had the feeling that he was a real drifter, a desperado with a chip on his shoulder. Some of the earlier songs like A Long Way to the Top and Ride On, which is the tune every metal guy gets played at his funeral, are very good. This is terrible. We're discussing AC/DC's earlier period!" Heavy metal gave way to progressive rock as Murdoch's teenage mind needed greater complexities to grapple with. Yes, the thinking adolescent's band par excellence, were his favourites. "I still listen to Yes, and I wonder why I like them and not Genesis or Pink Floyd," he says. "I think it's because they have a genuine musicality about them. Progressive is a dirty word, but Yes were simply into pure music and were trying to push back the boundaries. They didn't play chords, and they all played lyrical parts, even the drummer. Naturally, you don't mention to your fellow band members that you like Yes. It has been a bit of a problem." I ask Murdoch if he has heard Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman's later work. White Rock, for instance, his concept album about skiing? "No. Yes made three or four decent LPs and then they started wearing capes and flying about in jumbo jets and I lost interest, although it was already the early 80s when I was hearing those first albums. It didn't get me anywhere with the girls, but it's precisely because I got nowhere with the girls that I was listening to Yes and discussing Deep Purple line-up changes." Discovery of what Murdoch calls "the new music" - the 1980s indie scene spearheaded by the Smiths - came when he moved to Glasgow to attend college aged 17. The band that really suggested new possibilities was Felt, the lyrical underachievers led by a reclusive genius called Lawrence. "I had one of those pivotal moments when I saw the Smiths playing Bigmouth Strikes Again on The Old Grey Whistle Test, and another one when I first heard Felt," he says. "I thought that Felt were big but really it was 12 degrees of smallness: the scene I was on was a minority thing, and Felt were a minority thing within that - they would get maybe 200 people coming to see them. Now they're regarded as a great band, and there were plenty of shit bands, like Fields of the Nephilim, who were huge at the time and completely forgotten today. It's nice to know that you can recognise intrinsic quality a few times in your life." Murdoch doesn't listen to music much now, and when he does, he uses his i-Pod to walk around Glasgow listening to the people who first inspired him: Felt, the Smiths, Television, Joni Mitchell and Carole King. Films have taken over as his premier form of entertainment. "It's just natural that if you've been working in the studio for 12 hours, you don't want to go home and listen to music," he says. "What I really love doing is turning off the lights, putting on my headphones, and escaping into another world with a movie. I watched His Girl Friday the other night, which is fantastic: the dialogue is so snappy, and the way the reporters talk is really naturalistic. I love DVDs." Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com