Fu Manchu

Fu Manchu are in the UK for the first time in five years. We took the opportunity to catch up with guitarist Bob Balch before their show in Southampton.

R13: How's the UK been treating you so far?
BB: Awesome! The shows have been great, London was crazy last night.

R13: Do you find that you have to put a bit of extra work in with London?
BB: No, actually last night was pretty rowdy, it was cool. I think we played Wolverhampton two nights in a row, the first crowd was pretty quiet the second one was pretty rocking. Their all good, you know what I mean? There's not a bad one in the bunch, yeah, I like the UK, I like playing here.

R13: How does mainland Europe compare to the UK?
BB: You get less food on your rider, this places fed us though, they fed us pretty good. Yesterday we had to split prawn sandwiches that I wouldn't want my last enemy to eat. Everything else is pretty much the same. I mean, the food is good it's just that the venue don't give you too much. In Leeds and Wolverhampton we were fed, it hasn't been too bad. I remember before we were here in 2002 and we got nothing, we got a bottle of water between us.
R13: That was nice of them!
BB: Yeah (laughs) I was parched.

R13: Are you finding your money isn't going very far over here because of the strength of the pound against the dollar?
BB: Yeah, it's pretty expensive over here, I don't remember it being that expensive before, it's almost double. It's weird, Subway sandwiches are like $7, it's crazy, they're usually $3.50.

R13: Do you struggle with the language barrier in Europe?
BB: Not really, I don't really do too much talking to the people (laughs). It's not too bad unless you're lost or something. Most people over there speak English, except in Spain there was a couple of places they didn't.
R13: What about Germany? That's the one people usually say is bad for it.
BB: It wasn't too bad, again most people speak English there. There's a few spots where they didn't.

R13: The record title 'We must obey' is obviously a fuck you to somebody, who is it aimed at?
BB: I could give you full names, but I wont. We had a lot of management issues and label issues that we were going through, we replaced a couple of managers and switched round some labels, basically we were just getting fed up with the whole thing. Our management now is great, the label is spectacular, so maybe the next album wont be so angry. We'll see!

R13: Do you enjoy the writing and recording process?
BB: Totally, it's great. The only thing that sucks for me is I live an hour and a half away from those other guys so I have to drive really far. Other than that it's fine, it dig it.

R13: How much thought goes into your album artwork always seems to reflect the mood of the album?
BB: Yeah, the guy who did this one has been a buddy of mine since high school, I gave him the music and he came up with a bunch of ideas. He did this album and the last one, he's a good guy. He'll send me joke album covers that are really funny, I enjoy that. He's really good, John McGill. Usually we don't think about the work until the albums done. We're lucky they've all come out pretty cool. Our motto is if we're going to put it on our cover it's got to be cool enough to hang in your room or something. No drawings either, we've never done any drawings and I don't think we will for a cover, it's got to be a photo.

R13: You recorded quite few cover versions, how do you decide what songs to cover?
BB: We usually try to play at least one cover on each album, on 'King Of The Road' we did a Devo song and put it online, asked people to write in. There was two people wanted to hear that song. It was either that or Fog Hat 'Slow Ride' and we figured that would be kind of obvious for us to do, cos we always get the 70s rock tag. We're all big Devo fans so we took a stab at that. On this one we did 'Moving Stereo' from the Cars, we've been messing around with that riff for a while and we had it down about four years ago and just shelved it. I wanted to big it back out, it makes for good press too, gives people something to talk about.

R13: How important is Fu Manchu to you?
BB: At the moment I just want to go home... no, no, it's pretty important. I mean, I've been doing it for ten years, since I was 19 so it's a big part of my life.

R13: How important are you to them?
BB: I dunno, I mean, we all kind of pitch in the same amount of effort and stuff. The only thing I don't really participate much in in Fu Manchu is the driving of the band in the United States because I have "night vision" so they don't let me drive. Other than that we all pitch in the same amount of effort.

R13: Why do you think you're one of the few stoner rock bands to have survived?
BB: It's probably just because we all get along really. If this wasn't fun I wouldn't leave home for 14 weeks or how ever long we maybe gone. We all enjoy each others company to an extent, if one of us was a prick I don't think we'd do this at all. It's still fun and it still feels new and fresh. There's no real secret it's just an equation of people. We try to make each album sound different from the last one. Fu Manchu has a very definitive sound, we couldn't do anything too left field but we try to make it a little different each time.

R13: I know a lot of people have said you've gone back to your old sound with 'We Must Obey'
BB: Yeah, I mean there's a fuzz pedal that's been pretty important to Fu Manchu's sound, a guitar pedal throughout all the records and it got stolen off the stage on the 'King Of The Road' tour, I think it was taken in Boston. Then we did 'California Crossing' and we didn't have that pedal and everyone was like "Fu Manchu's changed, they have a clean guitar sound" but this pedal is really hard to find, and even if you can find it online they all sound a little different because they're hand wired and shit. The guy came to the show three years later and was like "here this is yours, my friend stole it" and he returned it. I was like "Na, it was probably you, man" so we just put it on the new album seeing as the guy gave it back.
R13: That seems a little weird though, why would you steal it to give it back?
BB: Well, we were bitching about it a lot in the press and I think he had read that we were pissed. And, it directly effected our sound so the Fu Manchu he liked so much to steal the pedal was now changed because he stole the pedal, so he was like "please make another album with this pedal, my friend stole it"
R13: I think I would have said I bought it for you rather than admit to taken it.
BB: Yeah, yeah but he gave it back so you know, it's cool.

R13: Out of all the tours you've played, which is your most memorable, why?
BB: They're all really good but you do it so much that you end up like "shit, which show was that?" I remember being extremely ill in Melbourne, Australia with the worst food poisoning of my life, I remember that show, that was horrible. The crowd was huge and everyone got really pissed because I couldn't play anymore, but I went online and explained it and they were ok, I remember that one. And on this tour I remember Christiana, Norway, it was super hot and the crowd was super violent, I was like "These people are going crazy!" They were on stage and diving, knocking shit over, swinging from the ceiling, it was nuts. Other than that it all clogs together.

R13: What's your overall view of the music industry at the mo?
BB: I dunno, I keep my head in the Fu Manchu game, I don't pay attention to other bands. Apparently there's this thing called Emo, I dunno what the hell is going on with that, I'm not to into that at all. I see a lot of bands that are playing a lot more rock stuff. When I started in Fu Manchu in 97 it was like Rap Metal was big and we were one of the only bands playing Rock, definitely from our area. There's a lot more bands embracing that sound, that's kinda cool.

R13: How do you feel about the move into the digital era?
BB: We use digital stuff in the studio, it's just how you use it. If you manipulate things too much your sound is going to be changed. For us, you can use that stuff, you've just gotta play the tune like it should be and there it is in digital form.

R13: When you buy music do you prefer to download or get the hardcopy?
BB: Ohhh.....well, this thing (iPod) has 10,000 songs on it and I never bought any of them (laughs) I dunno, I like having vinyl, I like having the actually thing, but I haven't bought any machinery to covert it, but that would be ideal, to have my whole vinyl collection on here would be great. I prefer vinyl to buying things digitally, but if it have to do it, so be it.

R13: Are you playing any festivals this summer?
BB: No I wish we were. The way the album was timed, we had a headlining thing already planned. I'd like to come back but we all need a bit of a break. Hopefully next summer we'll come back and do some stuff, that would be cool.

R13: What can we expect to see from you over the next year?
BB: Hopefully we'll be heading to Australia pretty soon, in a couple of months. I'd like to come back over here before Christmas and do another run. We'll just tour as much as we can until it comes time to start writing again. We haven't been over here since 2002, so hopefully we'll come back a lot sooner than five years, that would be nice.

R13: How come it took you so long to come back?
BB: Well, just the label and management issues. We had to fire some people and just figure out what we were going to do. The team we've got going now is really good, so we're stoked.

R13: That's great, thank you for your time.