IGGY & ZIGGY

[withahip]

didn't he say someone else wrote that opening riff?

but yeah, he's great!

I thought he said the producer taped him and put it together after they went outside for a game of hackey sack.

[Mr. Brian]

I thought he said he came up with that right on the spot in the studio but Mac says it was Les:

http://www.atomicduster.com/interviews/ ... /index.php

AD: Not to mention that you have a very distinctive voice. So how did the writing differ between this and the stuff you've done with Will?

IM: It didn't differ a lot at all. All I used to do with Will was say "This is what I've got. Now paint your bit on it" and that's how it's always been pretty much. I think it was Les who came up with that riff for "The Killing Moon" but even that was written the same way really. I suppose on "Slideling" one difference is that we concentrated purely on stripping it down, so any breaks like on "Seasos", rather than creating musical bridges, I've vocalised on it. It's a stylised vocal thing. Oh, and I nicked a bit of "Starman" too, seeing as it's the song that inspired me to get into music in the first place.

[black francis]

I thought he said he came up with that right on the spot in the studio but Mac says it was Les:

http://www.atomicduster.com/interviews/ ... /index.php

AD: Not to mention that you have a very distinctive voice. So how did the writing differ between this and the stuff you've done with Will?

IM: It didn't differ a lot at all. All I used to do with Will was say "This is what I've got. Now paint your bit on it" and that's how it's always been pretty much. I think it was Les who came up with that riff for "The Killing Moon" but even that was written the same way really. I suppose on "Slideling" one difference is that we concentrated purely on stripping it down, so any breaks like on "Seasos", rather than creating musical bridges, I've vocalised on it. It's a stylised vocal thing. Oh, and I nicked a bit of "Starman" too, seeing as it's the song that inspired me to get into music in the first place.

Slideling didn't sound that stripped down to me. Could have used a man's touch to butch up those songs. They were so much better live.

I don't know how much to believe when Mac goes on about his songs and generously letting the others add their bits here and there. I'm sure Will my have something to say on how the first three or four albums were created.

[Dr Cheese]

I don't know how much to believe when Mac goes on about his songs and generously letting the others add their bits here and there. I'm sure Will my have something to say on how the first three or four albums were created.

I'm sure I read an interview with Les where he said that was Mac re-writing history as far as the song writing process was concerned, that was one of the things that pissed him off about WAYGTDWYL - Mac turning up with a load of material that he'd already written and just telling the others to play it.

[black francis]

IN: Would you ever consider re-joining the Bunnymen?



LP: No! no... the whole reason why I wanted to be a musician, and to be in a band - my whole concept - was that there were too many old people doing it. Will used to play Doors records to me and show me pictures of Jim Morrison, all fat and with a beard, and I used to think "Never mind the music, look at the image!" I'm not saying I'm a perfectionist and everything must be right, but the whole punk thing was happening and the younger you were and the more you could come out with throw-away music, the more I loved it, y'know?



I don't know... its really weird y'know, but because of the circumstances in which I left, and I had to leave, Mac was being totally ruthless in a horrible way, instead of us writing music together, he was just trying to get his name on everything, and hustle people out of the music side of things. When he's your mate, you love the guy, I've had such good laughs with him, y'know, stomach-wrenching moments of laughter, all the way to the other side of the coin, beating the guy up, do you know what I mean? He's like a brother, but it was just no sense what we were going through. He just wanted to re-write the history books, and put his name on everything. And I found out - due to certain circumstances - it was such a horrible way in which he'd done it.



On the last album (What Are You Going to do With Your Life?), I had custody of my kids, and was going through the divorce when I got asked to do the band thing. It was dodgy you see so... I felt torn 'cos I had got my kids and I'd worked at that, and to all of a sudden to just go away and leave me kids... it was hard. My mum had MS and my dad had died in '94, so my mum was in a wheelchair, and when we got asked to go to a studio to record, I said "Hadn't we better come up with some songs first?" y'know, and I got told "No, we always do our best stuff in the studio on the spot". And I thought, "That's wrong". And then Mac had had these songs from years ago, y'know the Johnny Marr experience, and they were all pulled out of the hat. Then I got a phone call the very first day of recording saying that my mum had had a stroke, which turned out to be cancer, so I just went. A couple of days later the doctor said she only had 6 months to live, so I wanted to spend the last days with my mum. So with that, and finding out that these songs already existed, I wouldn't have had any chance of getting any money from it. Before, the songs used to come from different places, maybe the drums or a guitar or bass line, then we used to whip it into a typical Bunnymen sounding song, put the lyrics on and see how it was, and change it if it needed then. But we'd never written it all around one songwriter before. And it was without consent, if you know what I mean, so that's what really threw me.


IN: Was there a better feeling around Evergreen?



LP: Yeah, that was amazing, that was really good. I was really apprehensive beforehand but... what happened was Will and I still kept in touch, and we still owned a warehouse together, and they were doing Electrafixion, and anyway, it was my turn to collect the rent. So I went round to Wills and gave him his share of the rent, and he was acting very cagey, and I was like "What's up?" y'know, and he was like "Nothing, nothing", and I was just walking away and I'd forgotten to give him the money, so I walked back up to the door again, and just as I was about to knock on it, he opened the door and said "I'll tell you what it is Les, would you fancy joining the Bunnymen again?". I was really unsure, but he said just come down and see what it's like, y'know. So we went down to Mac's house, this is after a lot of phone calls from other people saying Mac's really burned out, he's had enough of the record business and it's not like the old days, he'll really listen to what other people have got to say, y'know? I didn't know what was happening 'cos I hadn't spoken to Mac for about 3 years, so we went down to his basement, and we started writing stuff together. I think Will and Mac had one or two ideas and I thought hang on what's going on here, this song sounds like it's already there, it's not worth me playing on it, and it was like "Oh, it's like the old days, your gonna get thirds, don't worry about it. Everything's thirds, it's got to be otherwise it won't work". So, right from the start it was like that, and we wrote lots of stuff together and it was just like the old days where we were absolutely buzzing off one another.

[Dr Cheese]

Yeah, that's the one.

Mac - what a knob he can be at times!

[black francis]

That thread sure died quick on the official forum.

[Mr. Brian]

Will says in the Crystal Days booklet, regarding The Killing Moon guitar intro:

It was Mac's song but I came up with that guitar bit in Bath. The guitar at the front---it was taped and sampled. I was just fiddling around waiting to do a take.