Acoustic troubadour Frank Turner has finally hit the big leagues. After years of touring the UK’s smallest venues, he’s finally made the step up to the heights of the UK’s arenas.
How does it feel to be headlining the O2 Arena?
It’s absolutely mental. I mean, it’s a strange one… We did the Wembley Arena show in 2011, which was a huge room, so to be able to play in places of that size again is just absolutely crazy. In a way I suppose I haven’t been thinking about the O2 as a standalone gig – I’ve just been thinking about the whole arena tour we’ve been doing. We’ve played the O2 before when we opened for The Pogues, so we kind of know what it’s like, but it’s going to be absolutely mad to be playing there again.
Are you as nervous for these huge arenas as you were for your Wembley Arena show?
No, not at all. I actually had a thought the other day that I’ve been enjoying these shows so much more than I enjoyed the Wembley Arena show. It’s hard to say whether I actually enjoyed Wembley or not – it was such a huge show with so much resting on it, so I suppose I spent the whole show just concentrating really hard and hoping that nothing was going to go wrong. However, in Manchester Arena the other night I just had a bit of time to just walk around the stage and go ‘yeah, I could get used to this!’. At the same time, I think that it’s important to hasten immediately to add that I don’t work on the assumption that I’m going to be playing at this level for ever – to be here for one tour is weird enough, and for two would be mad, but we’ll see!
What’s your favourite song to play live?
Well, when I’m on stage I’m an entertainer more than anything else, so I always enjoy playing the songs that the fans get involved with. I mean, I try and get the crowd involved in everything, but some songs do that more directly than others! It’s funny, because some bands seem to hate the word ‘entertainer’ and view it as dishonorable, and I think that’s hugely misguided. I can’t think of a nobler profession, for a start, and while you’re on stage you’re charging people money to come and see your show and to be entertained. If you don’t want to be labeled as entertainers, don’t charge people money to come and see you. It’s as easy as that.
Who’s been the best crowd of the tour?
Haha, that’s a loaded question! I think it was probably Nottingham. Sorry, Manchester!
Were you ever expecting the level of commercial success that you’ve had with the new album?
I’m hesitant to say yes, because that would make me sound presumptuous… England Keep My Bones did very well for me as a record, and I knew that there was going to be a big push for this record. This is the first record we’ve worked with major labels, so I knew that it was going to be pushed, but we weren’t really sure whether or not it was going to work! In some ways it’s quite a funny thing that I do for a living – you do something creative and then you just put it out there, and there’s no real telling whether or not people are going to like it.
What’s your favourite song from Tape Deck Heart?
Picking a favourite track is not something that I can do easily. I’m very proud of the last track on the record, Broken Piano. I’m quite a traditional songwriter – I write country-rock songs, effectively, and I’m totally comfortable with that. However, I do have a bit of a left-field corner of my music taste for post-rock and progressive stuff, and Broken Piano is kind of a nod to that. It’s outside of my comfort zone as a songwriter, so it’s something that I’m quite proud of.
What’s your favourite lyric from all of your songs?
Again, that’s very difficult. Off the top of my head I’m going to pick the last couple of lines of Broken Piano, ‘but as I stroked those broken keys, you did not join in harmony’. It’s a line I like because it’s intertextual. It’s a reference to a William Blake thing, a Nirvana live record… It’s quite a complex bit of poetry, I suppose, and more importantly it just paints a cool image to me. I feel like that sentence is basically what the whole of Tape Deck Heart is about – I feel like it’s about being an isolated fuck-up in London, so that line just serves to tie it all together nicely.
Which song do you wish you’d written?
I could pick many! Can I pick one songwriter and just have his works? There’s a Canadian songwriter called John K. Samson who sings for a band called The Weakerthans, and I guess he’s kind of a friend of mine now. I actually ended up writing the press release for his last solo record, because I was so excited about it. I just think that his melodies and wordplay are just sublime, and I’m just utterly mystified by how he writes his songs. We even briefly discussed the idea of working together, and I actually kind of just backed off it myself. I’m just not sure that I could deal with writing with him, because I’d just tell him that everything he did was brilliant.
Have you got any advice for aspiring songwriters out there?
Yeah! The two best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given in my life were ‘always try to keep your head above your arse’ and ‘be your own harshest critic’. Whenever I finish a song, a record or a show, I always try to be the first person to think of what went wrong and how I can improve it for next time. In some ways it’s quite a destructive mindset, but I think that if you approach things like that you certainly never get self-satisfied. I could write you out a long list of all the things that are wrong with the creative things that I’ve done in my life, but it’s not something that I’d ever do for public display; it’s more just something I’d do for myself. It means that you always find ways to improve. Oh, and make sure that you work your arse off. I listen to songwriting quite analytically. Songwriting is a separate skill to both performing and recording – they’re three separate entities, so to speak, and they’re all separate. I spend a lot of time listening to songs and try to pull them apart.
Describe yourself in three words?
Usually. Hung. Over.
