Neil Hannon
September 2004
Los Angeles

It was with much anticipation that I acquired The Divine Comedy's latest release, Absent Friends, some months ago. Neil said himself about it, “I haven’t been this excited about a record since Casanova." Having been satisfied with working TDC as a band with producer on the last album, Neil reclaimed control and got back to making music the way in which he was accustomed. The result finds Neil inviting us into his home and life for a very personal glimpse of the daily situations and concomitant inspirations that revealed themselves to him while writing this record.

Heavily influenced by the time spent away from home on his previous tour, Absent Friends presents the many feelings and themes of various unaccompanied and deserted lives. Though one might find this sort of subject matter dark and depressing, TDC ascend it to the next level employing lively melodies and building hope with each verse - toasting bravery, persistence, and the simple pleasures of a journey taken alone.

I was beside myself sitting with a slightly recovering Neil for a few moments after soundcheck for that evening's performance at the Troubadour, where we caught up on new happenings with TDC.

How are you doing?

I’m all right. I had too much of a good time last night, so I’m slightly destroyed. I’m hoping to hit my second wind just round about gig time.

It’s great to have you back in Los Angeles.

Thank you.

I was pleased to see that Nettwerk America decided to continue distributing the Divine Comedy stateside. Have they been supportive of you here with the release of Absent Friends and the current tour?

Yes, they’ve been very nice.

I wasn’t sure how much the label was helping you along. The turnout on your last tour here was great, but somehow, I didn’t anticipate a return. I sort of expected that to be my one and only opportunity.

They’ll do as much as they can for what our profile allows, and we’ll do as much as we can for what they can do for us. If we suddenly jettisoned into the big time, they’d be doing much more, I suppose. But, there’s no point in pretending that we’re enormous here…because we’re not.

Does your performance style change much as far as the level of appearance – going from festivals, to regular shows in the UK, to something even more intimate like this?

Yeah, everything sort of changes. We’ve had so many different line-ups this year. It’s ridiculous. From three to twenty-three. And a lot in-between. You obviously change how you approach the thing from gig to gig. I can’t do the same gags in the big arenas that I can get away with in front of a small bunch of people…and vice versa. Not that I actually tell jokes or anything. It’s just silly stuff. Repartee. [Laughs]. The songs themselves, this is much more hard work because I have to play and sing at the same time. With a bigger band, I never bother. I do the odd guitar solo just to look cool. It doesn’t work of course, because I’m not very good at guitar [laughs]. Regarding festivals, I just bring along the eight piece band, which is quite enough when you think about it. Who needs twenty-three?

I suppose it would be difficult to tour with an orchestra in tow.

It is. We’ve had regular orchestra people in Britain and Ireland, but we’ve done a few festivals so far this year in France, Switzerland, Holland, and Germany where we got local orchestras into rehearsal the day before, and played with them the night after. Which is nothing but edge-of-the-seat stuff, but it tends to work; bizarrely.

Do you enjoy playing the songs more stripped down in this environment, even though you say it’s harder work?

I do. I play different songs, just because some work better in a smaller context. If I really didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t do it. Because I just can’t be arsed to do things I don’t like doing.

Do many inspirations hit on how to rework the songs for smaller venues during rehearsals?

[Long Pause] They probably do, but I can’t think of any off hand. We have three layered components – stand-up bass, piano, and guitar. Usually, you’re trying to use everything sparingly and in the right places, so that you retain the different dynamics of the tune.

With respect to the larger sounding tracks, do you tend to keep them off the setlist completely?

Some. For example, it would be impossible to do something like Sticks and Stones off the new album because there’s so many different things happening all the way through. But we’re doing The Mutual Friend, which is the most enormous arrangement on the album. But of course it sounds very stripped down. The whole thing is like, it will work if the song’s good enough, you know?

When you were last here over a year ago, you had been spending a lot of time in the States, first with a mini-tour, then touring with Ben Folds, and then another tour of your own. I know you were writing a lot then, and the new tracks seem to have an American flavor in a few places. Most obviously with Idaho and Freedom Road. For someone who has written almost exclusively from a British point of view, how was it for you to allow your surroundings to influence you like that?

Yeah, I suppose I wouldn’t have written them if I hadn’t been here. I actually wrote The Happy Goth in Buffalo, but it doesn’t sound like it. There’s not a lot of that in music in Buffalo [laughs].

With the last two records, and the maturing of the writing style, has anyone given you any trouble for growing up?

I think there was one journalist, who luckily didn’t review [Absent Friends], who told somebody something like, “What’s he doing writing about his kids?” And I’m thinking it would be rather false if one kept writing more songs about cars and girls.

Right. I don’t think a lot of people understand that sometimes things which were once appropriate to write about no longer make sense. The best comparison I could make to that would be in regards to The Mutual Friend. You write from the position of the nice guy who met and shared a good time with a girl at a party. However, I think if you were writing this song during the Casanova sessions, you would write from the perspective of the mutual friend who ends up stealing the girl away at the end of the night.

[Laughs] That’s interesting. Yeah, I suppose I would have done. [Pause] Interesting…. Although colored by new experiences, the album itself is really kind of about everything, as usual. I think I’ve always tried to write in an all-consuming kind of way. I don’t rule anything out. So it’s not really about a certain subject specifically, it’s about being part of everything else. I try to do it holistically.

I was a bit curious about the two Laika references on this record. You created a theme as well as a sort of tribute in the title track.

I love dogs. I put the Laika reference in Absent Friends, but I had about thirty different verses for that tune. I had to try and whittle it down to five that I liked. I didn’t know how to link them, so I ended up not linking them at all. They don’t have any reason for being in the song apart from the fact that I liked the characters involved. Laika I just always thought, what a heroic animal. I thought it slighty ironic that man struggled all that time to go beyond the bound of Earth, and when they finally worked out how to do it, they gave the honor to Man’s Best Friend. Like, “Go on, you do it. We’re too scared.” [Laughs] It’s funny.

When we were making the album, Laika’s Theme originally had lyrics and was a completely different song. But the music ended up sounding far too nice and the lyrics didn’t really work, so we just scrapped that. It was the way in which the zither played off synths. It sounded very space-like – eastern European type space – so it seemed an obvious conclusion to name it after her. I’m a bit of a dog fanatic.

You only have the one dog though, right?

Yeah, because the wife won’t let me have any more! [Laughs]

I wanted to ask a little bit about the relationship between you and Joby Talbot, and what the recording process is like there. He’s credited as doing the arrangements on some of your records. Do you give him full creative control?

Not really, it’s more collaborative. I arrange all the songs on my computer with vague directions like, “Here’s a big string change, and a brass blast here” where I think everything should happen. Then, to a greater or lesser extent, Joby expands, messes with, changes, and makes it work much better. Because he’s got the knowledge. And also because he knows how to write the little dots on the bar. That always helps. He also has a large say in getting the players, and how many players, how we record them, and then he conducts them. So he does plenty.

Ever thought of having Scott Walker produce a Divine Comedy record?

No. A, I don’t think Scott Walker is a producer, any more than I am, and B, I don’t think I could ever have him in the room when I was making a record because it would be like trying to do it with your dad in the room. Too much awe going on, really. Besides, I think he’s in a very different musical field from me these days.

Last time we talked about your B-sides and how you sometimes use them to get your indie-isms out. Since then, I’ve noticed another outlet in the form of your demo versions, most notably with the Spaceman 3-like version of The Certainty Of Chance and the more recent Come Home Billy Bird, which has a lot more guitar to it than the original. Have you ever thought about using the demo versions as the final product?

All the time, because that’s what demos are. None of those versions are done like, “I’ll do this for the B-side.” They’re always sort of during the whole process, and then you just take different directions, really. Billy Bird was a weird one because there were hundreds of verses for that, and the chorus is completely different from the demo. I just don’t think the chorus on the demo did enough. The finished version is quite indie in itself especially with Lauren doing her bit. And there’s a twelve-string guitar break. It’s got sort of a groovy underpinning. Though it wasn’t quite groovy enough because I played most of it, but it did the job.

Do you think it would be too odd to have peculiar, spiky tracks on a Divine Comedy record? Though, there was that Europe By Train bit on Liberation…

I never did peculiar, spiky things to have peculiar, spiky things on the record, if you know what I mean. It was just what I was doing. In retrospect, there’s some things that were a little odd. But that’s no problem. I would never do it on purpose now. Basically, I’m trying to make the most gorgeous record I possibly can, and trying to weed out sooner the things that will annoy me in the future.

Even though the band is gone, I still see them occasionally attached to the Divine Comedy. For example, I saw Rob Farrer in the video for Absent Friends. Are they still collaborating or contributing, or do you just have them more as session musicians?

It’s always a combination of both. You’d never have the finished product, especially with those sort of drums and bass guitar or percussion, you add things and take them away, and they’re part of that process. I just always have the basic idea, and then hope for some input. Miggy played on the album, but hasn’t played with me this year. I got together a very rigid group of basic band-type musicians who, for the most part, played all the way through the year. They’re very good. They’ll probably play on the next outing, as well. Rob’s there, because he’s one of the few who are actually still doing it. Joby’s off being all classical. Pinky’s teaching music. Ivor is…[pause] Fuck knows what Ivor’s doing! [laughs] He was on a film sound course. I don’t know quite what’s happening now. Brian has been doing roadie work and live sound. So, if people want a job, they can have one [laughs].

Is there anyone that you haven’t worked with yet that you would like to work with?

I don’t generally go looking for guest musicians.

Has anyone approached you recently?

Not that comes to mind. Bastards. [Laughs]

One collaboration I wanted to ask you about was with Robbie Williams on No Regrets.

Oh yeah, I’ve been there. Before we did that tour with him in 1999. Guy Chambers, who wrote with him, phoned me up and said, “Will you come down and do some BV’s?” So I did, he also got Neil Tennant to do BV’s on the same track. But Neil had the clever idea of going to the mix and saying, “It’s very nice, but can you turn my vocals up?” I however, didn’t make it to the mix, so his are lovely and high, and mine are very hard to hear! [laughing] I’m not too horrified about that.

Can you confirm or deny anything about working with Rufus Wainwright? It’s been rumored a few times across scattered forums.

Um, no. That’s one person I’d certainly like to work with because he’s a very interesting and clever performer and writer. I met him after a show in Dublin recently, and he was very nice. What happened was I asked him whether he would come along and sing at the Royal Albert Hall show that we’re doing, but he’s touring at the same time, so can’t. That’s pretty much all that was. I have no idea if anything further will come of it.

I noticed during the soundcheck you were covering Queens Of The Stone Age and Franz Ferdinand. Are covers something you often do at that time?

Well, we’re doing the Queens Of The Stone Age cover tonight. Franz Ferdinand, I just wanted to work out what that riff was so that I could embarrass them. They’re going to be coming tonight. They’re in town. I hope they bloody well turn up now that I’ve taken the time!

Interviewers Note: Franz Ferdinand did indeed show up that night. TDC can be found online at www.thedivinecomedy.com.