If it weren’t for music you would wonder what on earth the young lads that make up The Coral would be up to now. The self confessed High School dropouts from Liverpool found their saviour in the unlikely heroes of the brothers Gallagher. Jamming Oasis songs in disused sheds and cashing out for demos with part time jobs certainly paid out for the band.
With 3 and a-half albums under your belt, does the creative process change much along the way?
Lee: When we first started we weren’t as prolific writers as we are now. For the past couple of years we have just been writing tunes every day, so it hasn’t really changed. Sometimes, when you are on tour you can’t really write that much, so you have to wait until you get back and have a few days off and you get to the practice room and just bang out a couple of tunes and get a few ideas.
It’s great, every 7 or 8 months there’s a new Coral album. Does your record company like that?
John: If it was up to them, we’d still be touring the first album. The mini album was just to get it out of our system. We knew we would take some time off to do the proper album. So we just went into a studio and had a laugh and just made these mad tunes. Some worked, some didn’t.
When it comes to the song writing who plays what role?
Lee: It’s different. Sometimes James will come in and he’ll have most of the song done on acoustic. He’ll bring it into the practice room and we’ll mess around with ideas. We’ll probably be listening to the same music round about that time, so we’ll all get into the same ideas. But other times there’s no lyrics, it’s just the music and we’ll take a few weeks over the lyrics. It’s different for every tune. The last album was mostly done on an acoustic.
John: Things always get changed when you play it as a full band. James will come in with the lyrics, a guitar riff and a melody and you see how you just base your music round that. Some bits change and some bits stay the same.
Lee: Sometimes when you get into the studio the whole thing changes cause it doesn’t work you gotta start all over again with it and you got to strip it down. It’s happened on a few tunes that way.
When did you first start playing in bands?
Lee: We were all in school together and we got into Oasis and that’s all we wanted to do. At first it was Ian the drummer and Paul the bass player, then James joined and then Bill and then I joined and we just used to rehearse in school and jam Oasis songs, Beatles songs and Verve tunes. We weren’t good at school, we weren’t good at footy and that’s why we thought, “Let’s just be in a band!”
So obviously Brit Pop was a big influence on you?
Lee: Yeah, definitely! Oasis were a massive influence on us. The first song I learnt was ‘Wonderwall’. When I first heard Oasis they blew my head!
John: They did change everything. Because before Oasis it was Scallys with skinheads and as soon as they’d come up all these Scallys started growing their hair. They changed everything.
What do you think of Oasis nowadays?
John: Their new album is really good! We did a gig with them a while back, about a month ago, and they’ve still got it! They are amazing to watch live. And they are still pulling in crowds of 60,000 people. You can’t argue about that. People might say that they’ve lost it or that they are too old or whatever. I guarantee you that if you were that age and you could still pull that crowd you would.
Paul Weller and the Jam are another huge influence on us. We’ve been getting into Bert Jansch, Miles Davis, some days you just wanna stick on a Motown record or a Johnny Cash CD.
Some journalists have written that you’re just stealing from your parent’s record collection or that you are a retro band. What do you think about that?
Lee: It’s alright isn’t it? Mum and Dad got a buzz record collection! (Laughs).
John: I suppose we are in a way, you gotta get your influences from somewhere haven’t you?
Lee: The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Sam Cooke get played in the house a lot when I was little. I guess that sort of jars you when you are little.
The Coral play the Carling Academy, Birmingham on the 26th October.
Christine Franz, Daniel Koch