The past year has been something different for the ground
breaking Indie Rock Band, Launch PadMcQuack. Forming in 2006, they were an
unheard-of local gang of boys that played covers in their friends garages and
in after 3 long years they reached fame through a chance meeting with one of
the most biggest Indie record labels. Now, in 2013, LPMQ is touring to promote
their new album, Back to Basic,
bringing them all around the world from London to Seoul.
However, the bands progression to world fame isn’t as simple
as it sounds; behind the scenes in an exclusive interview, Launch Pad McQuack
talk about their experiences on tour and the difficult obstacles they had to
face leading up their near break up last year, a decision shrouded in mystery.
“We though enough was enough,” says reclusive lead singer
Nick Green. “We can’t keep putting off this new album, the fans want it and we
want it.” After their 2009 success Red
Pony, the band struggled to release their sensational 2010 album Seven Eleven and worried about their
ability to meet fans’ expectations and go bigger with a third album.
Nick Green normally writes the quirky and enigmatic lyrics
that are typical of an LPMQ song and Ryan Ridley, the talented guitarist,
writes the music alongside him. In the days after the release of Seven Eleven and the waves of positive
reviews, the band had to worry about their first European Tour, but Green and
Ridley were also concerned about what to do next.
The next two years was a back and forth between hiding from
the spotlight and trying to come up with a direction for their new album. It
wasn’t until late 2012, when bassist, Jerry Coleman, decided to write the one
off song Writer’s Block, were Green
and Ridley able to come up with an idea for their future.
In this exclusive interview with INDY, Nick Green and Ryan
Ridley answer the questions we’ve all wanted to know the answers to and give us
an insight to why the band nearly decided to call it quits and how they managed
to come back from two years of hiding.
How’s your tour
going?:
Ridley: It pretty
mindblowing, one moment you’re sitting in your garage playing a cheap, out of
tune guitar and the next I’m travelling the world with my friends playing to
thousands of people that love our music. I mean, that’s something you don’t
expect, its not something I could have ever dreamed of, so it’s a great
experience to be touring.
Green: (with a
smirk) It’s going alright.
Were you surprised at
the amount of people that are turning up in places like Tokyo and Seoul?
R: I’m still
getting over the fact we were fully booked back in our home town nevermind
Tokyo.
G: I don’t think
about the numbers, all that matters is that people who care show up. That’s something
I understand, music is this very unique thing, it’s a binding force that
unifies people. When people hear good music at a concert they have a good time.
When people hear great music at a concert and theyre surrounded with people
that have they same mindset of them, then they have this experience that you
cant really have anywhere else. I’m not saying we’re great like the Beatles,
but people really appreciate our music. I don’t care whether its one person or
ten thousand, aslong as some one takes something from our music, I’m content.
R: I wouldn’t
care about the numbers if their tickets weren’t paying for our food. (Green and
Ridley laugh.)
There was a long gap
between your last album, Seven Eleven, and your new one, Back to Basics. What
was that gap like for you and how did it affect the album?
R: I’ll let him
answer this one, I was actually studying at University for most of the time so
I wasn’t as involved as people thought I was.
G: So we finished
Seven Eleven and people loved it, we toured Europe, it was great and we got
home and we went on the internet to see everybodys reaction to it; they loved
it. Everybody was still excited and hyped about Seven Eleven, but we were
sitting there and we were only thinking about what next. That’s a big decision
to make, Ridley announced he was taking the money and putting it towards
university and I was left wondering how I was going to write the next album. It
was just a year or two just writing, which all ultimately led to nothing. It
wasn’t until Jerry decided to come forward with his song that we knew what to
do.
And that was when you
had the direction for the new album?
G: We were all
trying to figure out how to make something new, different, unique. But when he
played that song, Writer’s Block, we all knew he was onto something; we heard
something in that song that wasn’t in anything I had been writing, it was
filled with everything that made our first album good. I knew that we had to go
back to the firs album and just keep listening to it and go back to the basics.
Then that led to the
album being called what it was.
G: Exactly.
R: It wasn’t as
easy as it sounds mind. I wasn’t able to help for the most part and there was a
lot of tension, especially when Mike, [the drummer], tweeted about leaving the
band, we all just got awkward and wondered if continuing was even possible.
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