Interview taken from HermAphrodite #5

Day 4, Phoenix Festival, Main Stage, 1996.

It's sunny, incredibly so, and far too early in the day. It's my first Drugstore gig, and I'm about to be swept offa my feet. Infectious energy and angelic melody. For the first time in such a long time, I don’t mind listening to songs I don’t know the words to - the new ones from the promised album are just gorgeous. And by the time I see them in Reading I have the chorus to ‘Hello’ memorised from this one hearing - a song which then featured the line 'to everyone who knows that Isabel is always right'...

But the best part of the set, was the beginning of the set. One person onstage with an acoustic guitar, and the first song I ever hear Drugstore play live has my name all over it.

I could sell the band to you on the grounds of the voice, the beauty of their songs, sleeve-art AND t-shirts, the swirl of the lyrics or the catching enthusiasm. I could tell you about how Isabel is always happily swigging a bottle of wine onstage. About how they’re friends with Radiohead, about their Thom Yorke duet ‘El President’. I could remind you of the corking World Cup theme song ( ‘Hey Glen Hoddle, looks like you’re in trouble...’ ) they now like to end the set with. Or even mention their recent ‘missing band-member voodoo-dolls’ kerfuffle.

But all it really comes back to is the song about Isabel and the bear and the witch. I love these people.

‘Once Isabel met this gorgeous guy / But Isabel Isabel didn't care, yeah...’

Leeds Duchess of York, 2nd April 1998.

In the inbetweener since ‘96 and now, Drugstore’s parent record company ( Go! Discs ) folded, and so they ended up tied and tangled up with the mess. They’re now on Roadrunner. Everything’s looking lovely. And everything’s sounding lovely. It’s a good day. The album that I’ve been waiting for two years to hear is to be finally out in the next month, and the music press at present is full of buzzing praise for their forthcoming ‘El President’ single. Myself, Becca, and miscellaneous Drugstore types are currently sprawled about the dressing room, happily conversing around subjects such as voodoo, automatic writing, and bondage. My vague nerves at interviewing people whom have been of import to me & my music collection for the last three years have been deftly allayed by the general affability of all in the room - listening back to the tape, this was one of the most giggly interviews I’ve done. Not that at times you can hear much more than just giggles. The band, unless excited, are mostly softly-spoken. Add to this Isabel’s lilting Brazilian accent and my not sitting right next to her, and you have a dictaphone transcription nightmare waiting to happen. So if in places I’ve given you Drugstore words more from my head than their mouths, all apologies. The balance can be amended if you go and listen to their music. That should fill in any gaps, really quite nicely.

And so onto the new album, ‘White Magic For Lovers’. Why that title?

Isabel - “Oooh, aah, hooo, umm...”

And I thought I was starting off on an easy one.

me - (helpfully) “Is that just your favourite song on there?”

Isabel - “No... ‘White magic’, it’s like - we all kinda like to feel we have control over our lives, over everything that happens in the world. We have no clue as to love, how it operates - it’s still a bizarre mystery why we love something and why we don’t. I’m sure in decades to come they’ll find that there’s a gene... I don’t want to be alive when that happens...”

me - “So it’s the way the words work together that you like?”

Isabel - “I also like the idea that we can all have PhD’s or become brain surgeons but we can still lose our heads and become emotional, and lose our control.”

So white magic, and those unknown forces, becomes the only way that people have of controlling the unknown force of love; both ideas / practices are somewhat insubstantial, but coupled together they give the experiencer some semblance of command. And it works well as a phrase. And it gives a good idea as to the album’s content.

As the all inclusive title ‘Drugstore’ belied an album written in the first person, ‘White Magic For Lovers’ refers to third parties as well as self. Neatly done. Particularly as...

me - “The new material seems much more external than the old...”

Isabel - “Yeah !”

me - “... you’re like, hugging the world.”

Isabel - “Yeah, definitely. (pause) That’s a very good description, we shall poach that.”

( general giggles )

Daron - “That’s just what we were talking about, that captures it.”

So now I’m all chuffed with meself, and everyone’s grinning… a good thing.

Isabel - “Our first album was so introspective... This album is more out there, making connections.”

me - “Yeah, I’ve spent the day trying to listen to the lyrics on the first one, and I don’t really understand that much of it, (hastily) but I still really love it.”

Isabel - “Not at all dear...”

The lyrics are all Isabel’s doing, and the band claim to understand them.

Daron - “I think I do. I hope so. Otherwise I’m not in the right band.”

me (to Isabel) - “ So where does it come from then, are you just writing from your point of view?”

Isabel - “I don’t know. I don’t believe I have the patience to sit down and put a song together. It’s absolutely and completely spontaneous - which is a little strange, because I never know what’s going to come. But every now and again I have this urge to go to the guitar, and when I have the urge I know there’s some- thing there. I’ve read a couple of interviews with songwriters who’ve said that it’s the same process, it feels like there’s someone else working in their sleep. I almost feel that I shouldn’t really take any credit for it... because when I’m strumming the guitar, the line comes ready made, and the next one, and the next. And I’m sure Freud would have like a field day on this, it’s all on a subconscious level; once it’s all written I can read the lyrics and think ‘ooh, I know exactly what that’s about’. In a sense it’s easy, there are always five minute out-bursts out there, you know, 1st verse, 2nd verse. Actually, if you do notice, the 3rd verses are the only ones I have to actually WRITE, thinking about it, trying to work out the rhyming. Because I only come out in spontaneous outbursts with two verse and a chorus. It all comes in rhymes, everything makes sense, the meaning of the song comes ready-made, the phrasing comes ready-made. And the more I try to do it I can’t.”

Daron - “I just read a book about The Beatles, most of it was written in an interview with Paul McCartney - and I was really surprised, he said they would come up with a verse, and by the end of that verse he’d be really struggling. It would just go. S’strange.”

But Isabel does like that way of working, very much so. Fountainous creation rather than tap-drawn pump-forced struggle for invention. And all that. There are minuses to it as a process as well though.

Isabel - “It’s frustrating because I can spend three months not writing anything at all.”

Becca - “Doesn’t that scare you?”

Isabel - “No, not really. Because I feel like (shrugs), ‘what can I do ?’, It’s beyond my control.”

And there will be a time when the band cease, she knows her inner muse to be exhaustible. In my searching for a ‘cut off point’ - after which they slink back into the shadows of their own limelight and cease to make music - my suggestion of ten albums was met with a vaguely incredulous reaction.

Isabel - “Ten hours of my singing, oh nooo. I think three or four...”

The band isn’t everything then, all the time...

me - “How do you spend your time when you’re not with us, recording ? Not obviously ‘with us’ now - with us onstage.”

Daron - “I swim a lot; I paint a bit, make things. About six months into us hanging around [ between labels ] I suddenly felt the urge to paint...”

Isabel - “I was the same thing, creating...”

Daron - “I had this outburst for about two months where I would just paint things... I made mirrors, and this big trunk. I was painting every day; I got up at eight o clock in the morning and would paint until about one the next morning. Every day. And then one day I just stopped.”

Isabel - “It gets better: I totally decorated my flat, which is just preposterous. But I got really excited about colour schemes and DIY... ( giggles ) It was bizarre. But I think we had all the energy within us but we didn’t have an outlet for it because we couldn’t tour.”

me ( to quiet strings player in corner ) - “And you ?”

Ian - “Oh, I have a real job.”

Isabel - “He has a classic job at a posh hotel where he goes and plays like 40’s and 50’s music.”

He has a special outfit to wear too.

Isabel - “I think he looks so smart in it...”

Ian - “It’s like this thing from Narnia, it’s like another world completely.”

me - “Are you going to be getting dressed up before you go on this evening?”

Ian - “Not like that. We will dress up though. Isabel wants to make us dress up.”

She won’t let him on in what he’s wearing at the moment anyways.

me (to her) - “So what are you going to be wearing?”

Isabel (as though slighted) - “This [ boots ensemble ] is not enough for you?”

me - “Nooo, what d’you WANT ?”

Isabel ( sorrowfully ) - “ I don’t KNOW. Roadrunner gave us some money to go buy some clothes - cos I told them I hadn’t got a stitch to wear. And we went out, and couldn’t find ANYTHING, isn’t that crazy?”

It’s always the way, when you have the money. But it’s not like they can never find anything to buy…

>>> Part 2

Last revised: 26/07/01