“I have never lived anywhere else apart from London, it’s inherently apart of who I am and who the band are as well, whether we like it or not.” Although acknowledging the power of the capital, John Hassall’s new band Yeti seem remarkably more intone with Liverpudlianmulticoloured acid-rock from a bygone era. Yeti isn’t quite the monster the name suggests, but a combination of Beach Boy melodies, jangly guitars and funky drumbeats.
Meeting through other band members, flatmates and friends, Yeti came together ‘properly’ after the disintegration of The Libertines and Hassall recalls putting the band together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Yeti is a tribute to their own, true influences rather than any of the other former bands the members were in. However pinpointing their inspirations is thorny. “No one knows anymore what their influences are because there is so much shit that’s being forced on you: everyday you walk down the street you’re being bombarded with music and advertising and people and fashion. It all rubs off on you I suppose,” says Hassall. It is rather isolated artists and situations that imbue fantasia into the band. “It could be a Beatles track…there aren’t many bands that I am into nowadays really, it’s a sad truth of the matter…there were 10 years ago, I liked Supergrass, Super Furry Animals, Oasis, Blur, now – not so keen on bands that are coming out.”
Hassall prefers to think outside the pre-conceived box, he prefers to think of Yeti as a stand-alone entity, like oddballs in the veins of pop music, or an inverted version of modern Britpop. He can’t really empathise with the current scene, preferring to revert to a reminiscent naivety. “There is a lot of optimism in Yeti, I think its something that’s lacking a lot in the music nowadays.”
Growing up with his dad’s records of monastic chanting, Hassall was left to discover musical richness on his own, until he stumbled across his dad’s lonely copy of The Beatles’ Revolver which ‘opened his eyes up to a completely different world’. Whilst bass player Brendan Kersey had a wealth of creativity; a divine ineffable inflatus, very much the antithesis to John’s childhood musical drought. “My granddad used to own a record shop in the sixties, so I had a wealth of records that I grew up with, and he’d have everything from Tamla Motown to Television.”
Rapaciously admitting that they want to create music that they would still think was worth listening to in five or ten years time, Yeti are striving to make something that first and foremost they are happy with themselves. “You wanna reach personal success, you wanna please yourself…[but] once you reach one goal you’ve always got another one set” says Brendan.
Nostalgic about the past, sceptical about contemporary music, John simply puts it: “If you can’t find a band you’re into, you’ve got to try and be that band yourself.”
Jenny Pashkova