Interview:Mansun Guitar Magazine September 1998

Interview With Dominic Chad and Paul Draper from Mansun
...It's Guitar Madness
Interview with Dominic Chad, Paul Draper
Date:	September, 1998
Source:	Guitar Magazine (UK)
Interviewer:	Michael Leonard
External resources

Foreword

THE MANSUN FAMILY

Mad wibbly intergalactic flange guitars, an obsession with a drowned rock star, close encounters with Winnie The Pooh and a visit by a real, live Timelord: it's all bread and butter to Chester's Mansun, busy crafting an album that's surely set to redefine the terms 'vision' and 'scope'. Singer Paul Draper and Guitarist Chad have the full story...

Interview

With well-heeled Richmond to one side and prim Putney to the other, the genteel south west London suburb of Barnes does not appear to be one of the capital's more overtly rock'n'roll quarters. True, Marc Bolan died tying a mini round a tree - possibly even an old oak - on that road running past the Common, and it's rumoured that Ben'n'Tracey of Chablis junglists Everything But the Girl reside in dinner partying domestic bliss nearby. But stroll a few hundred yards past the village-esque pond on the Church Road, and you'll find Olympic Sound Studios. Despite it's unassuming nature - no gold discs adorn Olympic's reception walls, simply a single vibrant watercolour of a classical quartet - this place has more than played it's part in rock'n'roll creation and chaos. Olympic's 1960's habitués included the Rolling Stones and, occasionally, The Beatles, plus Jimi Hendrix, who recorded most of his first two LPs here. Today, Olympic is paying host to Mansun, who recently completed their epic second album Six in Studio 3.

'It's cool here,' announces lead guitarist Chad, he of the domed '60's barnet and once-toe curling reputation for rock'n'roll hellraising, settling down in one of the mixing rooms. 'Hendrix is one of my idols, and Brian Jones too, obviously, so it's nice to work in the same place. I haven't picked up any vibes yet though... I've been trying to do my own thing.'

In may ways this hotbed of '60s invention is a fitting place to find Mansun. You couldn't comfortably describe their sound as retro, but their sometimes-clumsy yet always wilful directional swerves in style do hark back to the late '60s, an era when popsters snorted up influences and spat them back out with unhinged abandon. In an age where many pop hopefuls coolly calculate their 'relevance' of their sound to prevailing tastes before even putting notes to tape, Mansun are so heroically adventurous they deserve a special badge. And a Handle With Caution warning.

Like their boldly ambitious debut Attack of the Grey Lantern, Mansun's starling follow up Six, released on September 7, is something of a concept piece. Lyrically, there are numerous themes: cult '60s TV drama The Prisoner, bear of little brain Winnie the Pooh, Taoist philosophy, the death of rolling stones Brian Jones, the grim guilt complexes resulting from a strict Catholic upbringing - and that's all before you get to part 2. And in the time-honoured style of serious art statements like Sgt Pepper, Quadrophenia and, ooh, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, the music zigzags all over the shop. There's chart potency in the hooks of Negative, Being A Girl, and Seratonin, but the songs around them are almost free of the

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