Photo: Wenn
Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos has revealed that he was ready to split the band up two years ago after experiences in the American market turned them into the sort of band they didn’t want to be.
Speaking with The Observer ahead of the release of their fourth album Right Thought, Right Words, Right Action, Kapranos remembers that following their third album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand he became disillusioned with the group’s position.
“[The] fun went out when I felt I was working to someone else’s schedule or deadline,” the frontman tells the newspaper.
“I’m not naturally the kind of person who works well under those conditions. In fact, my whole adult life before that point, if I’d been in a job where I felt I was under pressure, I would usually just jack in the job. And suddenly I couldn’t do that any more. But maybe... Maybe, thats what we did after the third record.”
Asked whether or not the band actually split up, Kapranos explains: “I met up with Bob [Hardy, bassist] in Orkney about two years ago. I wanted to split the band up, because in my head it felt like one of those jobs... the ones I had to jack in. I didn’t like the routine and the obligations. And whether those obligations lay with my contemporaries, my peers, my record label, the fans, the audience - or maybe myself... I felt... It was time to, erm, stop that.”
Kapranos also discusses the band’s experience with an American major record label, having been unable to stay with their UK independent Domino when they transitioned to the States, remembering when the band’s boss on their American label flew to Boston by private jet to see the band perform.
“I’m thinking, ‘What the hell are we getting into here?’” he remembers.
Franz Ferdinand on stage in Moscow
But speaking about the band’s new album the singer says the band have rediscovered their old spark by returning to their core values.
“When we came to making the new album, we decided that oddness was just us! And we should enjoy that: it should be at the heart of our existence if we want to continue.”
Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is released on August 26.
Below: Franz Ferdinand, Editors and more - bands then and now
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