The Pleased interview by Ged M and Paul M

The Pleased are a five-piece from San Francisco (or London via SF, in Rich Good’s case): Noah Georgeson (guitar, vocals), Rich Good (guitar, vocals), Joanna Newsom (keyboards), Luckey Remington (bass) and Gennaro Vergoglini (drums).  Joanna and Noah are classically trained and met at conservatory; Joanna is a mean classical harpist!  They’re described by the Face as “the blazer-wearing indie boy's new fave band” which is a neat way of saying that the NME will have them on the front cover in 6 months so get in first!  They’ve got this cool New Wave style and songs that by turns make you cry, think and dance.  Their website www.theplease.com still bears their old name before the enforced change but will sell you some of the coolest, most articulate pop music you’ll hear this year or next, plus some striking t-shirts.  We met Luckey and Joanna, plus Rich, in a coffee bar on Oxford Street before their gig at the Metro Bar in November 2002.       

SXP: Your names – are they your given names, not stage names?

Luckey: Yeah.  The names- they’re all our real names!

SXP: ‘Luckey Remington’ is a great name!

Joanna: It’s his grandfather’s name.

Luckey: *laughs*. It’s a family name, it’s been passed down!  It’s ‘–ey’; if it had been ‘–y’, well…

SXP: You were born into rock ‘n’ roll really! 

Luckey: That’s what they say.  ‘Joanna’ is Joanna’s real name!  She’s rock ‘n’ roll too.  She’s named after the Bob Dylan song.   

SXP: Many reviews make comparisons to The Strokes.  Does that irritate you?

Luckey: Yeah.

Joanne: It tends to get made the most by people for whom The Strokes was their first introduction into a genre of music that doesn't get very big, especially in the US, very often.  There's a huge number of bands playing a certain rock that I don't even know the name for but the Strokes, especially in the US, were the first band to hit Top 40 radio with that sort of music.  I think if you really listen to us...we occasionally get bunched in with the garage rock scene but I think there's a lot more we have in common with a lot of Britpop.  Those are the bands we tend to listen to more.  *laughs* We have one Brit in our band - Rich is an Englishman - so that’s our excuse and we can play Britpop!

SXP: I can hear traces of Sonic Youth and the Smiths and Television as well.

Joanna: Yeah, we love Television.  I think all three of those bands we like.  We tend to get compared to Sonic Youth all the time.  We all like Sonic Youth…

Luckey: I do!

Joanna: …but not enough to consider them an influence.  But I like that as a comparison.  I certainly don’t mind being compared to them! 

SXP: What are your influences as a band?

Joanna: We have super-different influences.

Luckey: I’d say we all have very varying influences. 

SXP: You’re on bass.  Have you listened to a bassline somewhere and thought: I want to reproduce that?

Luckey: For bass, it would be the Stone Roses probably. 

Joanna: Television is one of my favourite bands ever.  I love, love Talking Heads so I’m sure that’s influenced me in some way. 

Luckey: Rich would say Roxy Music, I know that.  Noah might say Pixies. 

Joanna: Yeah, he might say Pixies.  He usually says something about some minimalist composer he’s really, really into.  Terry Riley, maybe John Cage, I don’t know if he likes Cage a lot. 

Luckey: We tend to take a pretty minimalist approach to the music we write anyway.

Joanna: Probably our main thing in practice, if we rework a song, it’s really stripping it down as opposed to building it up.  Trying to make it as clean as possible. 

SXP: Who writes the songs?

Luckey: We all do.  We all have songwriting credits.  A song usually comes about with one of us bringing in a melody or a progression and then we all work it from there.  You bring something into the band room, whatever, and it always ends up inevitably changing from what you originally had in mind.  We’ve put a lot of faith in each other not to get too controlling with what you’ve brought into the bandroom.   If I bring something in, and I have something in mind for what I want it to sound like, I try not to get too forceful, like: no,no do this!  I tend to trust everybody in the room to come up with something that, in the end, we’re all going to be happy with.  And I think that’s how a lot of our songs are written.   We all trust one another a lot. 

SXP: Are you all lyricists as well or does one person write more lyrics than the others? 

Joanna: In this band, we all write songs on our own but I think it’s just Rich and Noah who write the lyrics.  Occasionally one of us will throw out a lyric.  I wrote one lyric: I wrote the chorus for One Horse. 

SXP: Are you proud of that one?

Joanna: Oh yeah, very proud!   It’s my one claim to fame! 

SXP: Talking about being proud, what did you think of The Face article that said you were one of the 40 bands to watch?

Joanna: I think we were all pretty honoured to be in the article as well as it making us a little nervous.  We like a lot of the bands in the article as well and it’s a little nerve-wracking to be grouped in with any huge sort of movement of bands.  There’s been no bandwagon-jumping going on.  If you listen to the music it’s pretty different as I said before.   

SXP: Was the list put in order?

Joanna: I don’t know.  I think it was Yeah Yeah Yeahs first and us second, which I don’t think is indicative of any sort of order.  

SXP: It could be.  Although I [Paul] would argue you should be ahead of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, great though they are.

Joanna: Ah, you guys! 

Luckey: *laughs* We’re better than the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, correct! 

Joanna: Oh Oh.  I don’t want Karen O beating us up!  But we were really, really excited to be in the article.

Luckey: There were a lot of mixed emotions.  We were excited to get the attention of course but at the same time there’s a lot of pressure.

Joanna: And they described us as the “skinny white tied indie boy’s favourite band” which just made us feel like: what?!

Luckey: There ‘s a lot of weird comments in that article.

Joanna: They didn’t ever misquote us unkindly – they never made us say stuff that we were like “what! They shouldn’t have said that ” - but we definitely didn’t say anything that they’ve quoted us as saying!  

SXP: They were probably nice, like representative soundbites.

Joanna: Which is fine.  They were probably more eloquent than we were! 

Luckey: Joanna was featured in the Face by herself the next month: September.  They flew her to New York!

Joanna: I got a trip to New York out of it.  They flew me to New York, took a big, ridiculous picture where I’m not even recognisable, like a spread, and sent me home again.

SXP: Was that a fashion thing? 

Joanna: It was for an article on the new women in rock.  There were five of us. It was a weird theme and I don’t know why they picked the people that they picked. 

SXP: It must have been based on the Face article.

Joanna: I think so, but it was mostly electroclash people, and then me! 

SXP: Do you get a lot of reaction to the article?

Luckey: Not overwhelming, but there surprisingly is.  At every show this past week, there’s been a handful of people saying “I’ve seen the Face article”.

Joanna: Or bringing the article to have it signed.

SXP: Are you reasonably big in San Francisco?  Fair-to-middling?

[Rich joins us]

Rich: Huge!  Huge in San Francisco.

Joanna: The bands that are huge in San Francisco are not usually from San Francisco, they’re usually…[thinks hard]…the Dave Matthews Band, and Phish and stuff.

SXP: Is there a scene?

Joanna: There is a scene.  It’s small and, like, very straight faced.

SXP: And you’re top of it aren’t you? 

Joanna: I don’t really know.  You can’t really tell with those people.  They look at you and refuse to tap their foot.

Rich: Yeah, San Francisco audiences are very difficult to break through to. 

Luckey: I would say, in the public consciousness, we are probably one of the bigger bands there.  Nobody would admit it! 

SXP: Did you form in 2001?  And how did you come together?

Luckey: Yeah.  Rich moved to America three years ago.  We were all living in this town and we all started playing music together.  We were all playing music in the town and in a smaller town and we all knew of each other. 

Joanna: Noah and I were going to school together.

SXP: Rich, were you in a band in the UK before you went to San Francisco?

Rich: Nothing worth mentioning [the others laugh].  

Joanna: Plenty worth digging up and making fun of!

SXP: Was it beyond bedroom?

Rich: Just.  Barely beyond bedroom. 

SXP: Ever release anything?

Rich: No.  Definitely not.  One of the bands was called The Rocket Reducer, which was an MC5 song title.  But I can’t take any credit for anything.  And that’s about as interesting as it gets. 

SXP: We probably know people who’ve seen The Rocket Reducer.

Rich: [insistent] No, no, you really wouldn’t have!  I guarantee that you haven’t.  We played three gigs or something! 

SXP: If you formed in 2001, you’ve come a long way in a short time.  You’ve already supported the Vines and the Von Bondies.

Joanna: And Clinic.  That was the one we were the most excited about. 

Rich: And the Music.  We’ve just played with The Music, two weeks ago. 

SXP: Do you like them?

Rich: Do I like them?  I like them more and more!

Joanna: There’s some dissention in the band.  I love them.  I think they’re great. 

Luckey: I think we all like them. 

Rich: They’re the nicest guys in the world as well.

SXP: How did you manage to get a gig with the Vines?  Because they’re big now.

Luckey: We played with them just before they got massive.  This is before the cover of Rolling Stone, before I think the album was even released.  There was still a buzz around them but their album hadn’t been released. 

Joanna: We knew that it was a big deal but half the people who came didn’t even know.    

Rich: And the venue that they played at was one that we played quite a few times and had drawn a lot of people in and I think that’s why…I don’t know if they chose us but whoever chose us just knew that we could open the show for that kind of band. 

SXP: Who are the best band that you’ve played with? 

Joanna: The Walkmen are good.  We love the Walkmen.

Rich: The Walkmen and the French Kicks and Clinic, by far. 

Joanna: There’s been someone else really good.  Oh, the High Drivers.  We love the High Drivers. 

Rich: The High Drivers from Northampton.  Make sure you mention them! 

Joanna: They’re sweet guys and they’re really good. You should drop their name in.

SXP: Tell us about your records.  You’re releasing them yourselves.  There was the first EP which became the second EP and now you’ve got an album out.  Why have you done it like that? 

Rich: Because everything we do is random.  There’s no structure to anything.

Joanna: We keep getting excited about one or two new songs that we have and we’ll want to record them and we want them to be heard and accessible immediately.  And it’s like: well, we can’t sell a CD with two songs on it so why don’t we add it to our other songs? 

Rich: The nice thing about being unsigned at the moment is that we can do whatever the hell we want.  Why not re-record the song and put it out at the next show? 

SXP: Will the album be on sale at your show? 

Rich: Yeah.  And Rough Trade will have it very soon.   And it’s all hand done.  

Luckey: Everything in this band, from the t-shirts to every design, is us.

SXP: Who’s responsible for the artwork?  Does one of you have a particular artistic bent?

Rich: I put it together but it’s generally pretty collaborative in terms of designs we use. 

SXP: So do they mean anything: the flamingo, the castles, the horses? 

Rich: Well, the flamingo is The Flamingo in Vegas, but you wouldn’t know it.

Joanna: It’s a hotel, right?   Are we allowed to say where the castles are from? We might get sued!

Rich: I don’t think we should say where the castles are from.  Leave that in a total mystical place.

Joanna: They have a connection with mystical, childhood, enchanted fiction. 

Rich: We’re a very mystical band!

SXP: There are loads of 80s-influenced bands like Interpol, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Radio 4.  Do you feel any affinity with them?  It’s mainly a New York thing.

Luckey: I think the continental divide between the West Coast and the East Coast keeps us separate from anything in New York. So if anything we’re almost challenging that notion of East Coast retro-80s or New Wave or whatever.

Joanna: Many of the bands that we’ve been influenced by, their most creative period was the 80s but I don’t think it’s an ironic or a sort of retro reference.  It’s more the things that we’re inspired by and building on that, rather than anything that’s reminiscent in any sort of overt way.  

SXP: Thank you!