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| Interview by Burt Wolf with Matt Young, bassist & backing singer for PILLOW. Interview done 2-25-07. |
| PILLOW STARTSED OVER 10 YEARS AGO, CAN YOU GIVE SOME OF THE BANDS HISTORY UP TO THIS POINT? We started the band in high school, I was about 15 & the other guys a little older. We started the band because there was a show happening at a local community hall. I asked the promoter if we could play & told him I had a band, which was bullshit, because we hadn't even rehearsed. We ended up having one rehearsal & getting up & playing. Since then, we've done lots of all ages shows, until we were old enough to play in pubs. Once we started playing in pubs, things started to roll along for us a bit better. The punters were a bit friendlier towards us & we started getting some good supports. We've released a few demos over the years & finally released our debut album mid last year. |
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| WHY DID THE BAND BREAK UP FOR A 2 & A HALF YEAR PERIOD? A few reasons, our singer's work requires him to travel a lot, so when he's in town we have to schedule our stuff around him. We'd been doing that for quite a few years, so our guitarist Adam & I decided we wnated to travel. We both did our respective venturing & moved to London, where we made several unsuccessful attempts at starting a band. When that failed we decided to come back to Australia & give PILLOW another shot. All members of PILLOW have been involved in other bands as well, so time's gone into getting those established. PILLOW IS AN ODD NAME FOR A BAND? WHY WAS THIS CHOSEN AS THE BANDS NAME? It leads back to us being young & stupid & the name sticking with us over the years. We had to come up with a name for our first gig & that stuck. It was going to be PUBIC DREADS for about five minutes, but the promoter didn't want that on the poster. We've gotten used to the reaction people give us when we tell them our band's called PILLOW. It's usually a half scrunched up face with a "What the fuck?" expression. Usually after they see us play live, it just makes sense in a strange kind of way. |
| I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE INTO A LOT OF STYLES AS SHOWN IN YOUR SOUND. WHO HAD SOME INFLUENCE ON YOUR MUSIC & YOUR LIFE? My older cousin used to introduce me to a lot of music he thought was cool, like MOTLEY CRUE & WASP & later on METALLICA & SLAYER. My dad is responsable for steering me in the direction of AC/DC & BLACK SABBATH. The rest I learnt from listening & having musician friends. I think it's good for a musician to be exposed to lots of different styles. SINCE YOU GUYS DO MIX IT UP A LOT WITH STYLES HOW WOULD YOU BEST DESCRIBE THE SOUNDS OF PILLOW? The objective of PILLOW has been to sound unique, which I think we've achieved to a certain degree. We're a Hard Rock band for sure, but we also like Metal, Pop, Stoner, Funk, Country, Hip Hop & more. We do our best to try & incorporate it all, whilst remaining true to our sound...if that makes any sense. Sounding Australian is something that's evident when you hear us. WHY HAS IT TAKEN 10 YEARS TO RELEASE YOUR DEBUT FULL LENGTH? There was never really any urgency to record an album, until 4 years ago. We'd played a lot of shows & had some money put away, so we hired a studio out for 4 days. It sat on the shelf for a whole 2.5 years until Jason from BLOOD DUSTER offered to mix it for us. That just happened to be about the time we were planning on playing shows again & were lucky enough to support CLUTCH & finally get the album out. HOW WELL HAS YOUR DEBUT "GOOF ROCK HIGH" CD, THAT CAME OUT LAST YEAR BEEN DOING IN THE SCENE? It's doing ok. It's definetly not charting! We've got a good following in Melbourne, the other cities we haven't had the oppurtunity to play often. It's an entirely independent release, so we've payed for everything, we've always been that kind of band. There was interest from some publishing companies, but we aren't really functioning to the extent they would like. We ordered heaps because we didn't want to run out, there's plenty left, so drop us a line & we'll send you one! |
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| CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE ALBUM COVER & WHO DID IT? Our friend Boyd Synnot did the artwork. He's always done the artwork for PILLOW posters & over the years has come up with all the characters you see on the cover. We wanted a theme of "goof rock high" with the idea of having a school photo on the front & us playing the high school ball & the characters dancing on the back. I guess it'd be a little confusing to anyone that saw it & didn't know us, but it's all relative to us & we'd prefer it that way anyhow...you can check out more of Boyd's art @ www.myspace.com/boydsart. WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE PILLOW SONG & WHY? I think I prefer the longer ones that venture out into different styles, than the straight ahead Rock songs. I would say "Spitshine" is my favorite one to play at the moment. WHAT IS SOME THE LYRICAL SUBJECTS IN YOUR SONGS? WHO WRITES THE MAJORITY OF THE MUSIC? |
| After we listened back to the final mixes & mastering we started counting how many references there were to drinking on the album. When it exceeded 50 we started thinking "What message are we trying to portray here?" Other than drinking, cars, chicks, fighting, drugs, midgets, aliens, ufo's, cooking your brain, apaca's, bar tabs in Chicago & a pet sheep named Joseph, not much really. Adam & myself usually write most of the music, but we all have a go at everything. Heath writes a majority of the lyrics & I write some here & there. ARE THERE ANY LABELS INTERESTED IN PILLOW? IF SO, WHO? There's been some interest. At the end of the day, we find it easier to do it ourselves in Australia, because of the fact we're limited in the amount that we can tour & play, not only because of distance, but work commitments as well. It's unfortunate, I've always wanted to push the band a lot, but there's only so much you can do when the other members that make it happen, have other commitments, you begin to accept that after 10 years. We haven't played a live show since we put the album out last year, so I think the time will come when we'll have to get back out there. I GUESS YOU GUYS DON'T PLAY OUT A LOT? WHERE & WITH WHO HAVE YOU PLAYED? Not recently, but we've played with a wide variety of bands: NEBULA, THE DATSUNS, THE SMUGGLERS, CLUTCH & from Australia we've played with BLOOD DUSTER, THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, FRANKENBOK, DREADNAUGHT, COCKFIGHT SHOOTOUT, COG, WARPED, THE HARD-ONS. I like the fact that we can sit on a Rock bill or a Metal bill & not bee too out of place. We've played some of the worst venues in Melbourne & some of the best & played shows interstate. It's a lot harder to get to other cities from Melbourne, the nearest which is Adelaide is an 8 hour drive. DO YOU GUYS FEEL YOU AREN'T TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS A BAND BECAUSE OF YOUR NAME & SONGS? For sure, but honestly it doesn't bother us, we come out & play when we want to & people still come see us. There is a portion of Australian bands who are tongue in cheek & enjoy their sarcasm & taking the piss. It would be fair to say we're one of those bands. Bands like TISM, PAINTERS AND DOCKERS, FRENZAL ROMB, THE HARD-ON'S, THE ONYA'S have all been popular & stuck to their guns. Not your typical regenerated crap that's quite common these days. ANY INTERESTING BAND STORIES YOU COULD SHARE WITH US? Plenty, it's been over 10 years now. I remember one from when we were younger, our first pub gig ever with 2 bands DREADNAUGHT & W.A.R. It was in Ballarat a small country town & none of us were legal drinking age yet, which is 18 over here. We got to the city & drove about 2 miles up the wrong way of a packed one way highway. When we got to the pub they almost didn't let us play because we were to young. After we played they made us go to our rooms up stairs & wouldn't let us watch the other bands. So the other bands ended up bringing jugs of beer & chicks & we partied up there all night. It ended up being a good introduction to band ethics. Adam likes to get dressed up & wear costumes. I've dressed in drag before & as Hannibal Lector once too. I got wheeled in to the show chained to a bed, it was funny for about 5 seconds. There's lots of stories of all the money, we've earnt from gigs mysteriously ending up back in the bars cash register. We're still trying to work that one out. |
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| WHAT WAS THE FIRST ALBUM YOU BOUGHT? WHAT WAS THE FIRST CONCERT YOU WENT TO? First album I ever bought was GEORGE HARRISON "CLOUD NINE" on cassette, it had that song "Got My Mind Set On You". The first concert I went to was POISON on the "Open Up & Say Ahhh" tour in 1988. I was 7 or 8 years old, I had a denim jacket with a POISON patch on the back of it. I sucked big time!!! I KNOW YOUR INTO MANY STYLES OF MUSIC. WHO ARE SOME OF THE BANDS YOU HAVE CURRENTLY BEEN LISTENING TO? |
| I always listen to AC/DC, SABBATH, THE WHO, ALICE COOPER, THE KINKS, ZEPELLIN, all the classics. WEEN, MELVINS, CLUTCH, MASTADON, ZZ TOP, RADIO BIRDMAN, MONDO GENERATOR, TURBONEGRO, THE CLASH & some good local Australian stuff I should mention as well, BEEN FLIPPER, FUCK I'M DEAD, THE ABANDONMENT, THE BLACKLIST, There's lots of good stuff over here at the moment, especially Metal. I like vinyl, so I'm always getting some strange records & giving them a listen too. WHAT DO THE MEMBERS OF THE BAND DO WHEN NOT DOING ANY WORK FOR PILLOW? Adam our guitarist plays in a Melbourne band LEGENDS OF MOTORSPORT, I'm not quite sure what else he's doing at the moment, but they've just put an album out & been playing a lot. Heath our singer is a puppeteer (no bullshit) & has to travel quite a lot for his work. He also sings in a Country band called THE PALENECKS. Ben our drummer is a buisness guy & also plays in a band called TAILBONE. I play in two other bands at the moment, UNCUT WHITE NOISE which has been going for about a year & a new band I'm doing called TIGERNAUGHTS which we've just started...you don't wanna know what I do for money in my spare time. I'll give you a clue...it involves the colors, brown white & pink...and I don't make Napolitan Ice Cream. WHAT IS THE SCENE LIKE IN AUSTRALIA? WHO ARE SOME OF THE BETTER BANDS & LABELS? Melbourne in particular has a great music scene, lots of good venues & a strong support base. When it comes to extreme Metal, theres some good bands, BLOOD DUSTER, PSYCHROPTIC, THE ABANDONMENT, FUCK I'M DEAD, EARTH, TERRORUST. The Rock scene is probably the healtiest, you only have to look at bands like JET to see how far that's gone in Australia. there's a new band coming out called AIRBOURNE, they sound like a cross between AC/DC & MOTORHEAD. They're very enthusiastic & put on a great live show. The thing I like about Melbourne most is you have to be different to stand out, whether that's being funny, exceptionally talented, wearing a g-string on your head, or going on stage naked & covered in blood...theres so many bands here that you have to do something original. WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE NEXT FROM PILLOW? ANY NEW MUSIC WRITTEN YET? With the amount of songs we've written over the years we could probably go & record another album tomorrow. It probably wouldn't be very good though. What we usually do when we haven't played for a while, is book a show a few months down the track & see if anyone turns up... We're all usually there & end up having a good time. We've written a few new songs, so it'd be good to get a recording done this year. |
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| WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE ANSWERING THIS INTERVIEW? WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW THAT IT'S DONE? I woke up, it's 4:30 in the morning, I just had one of my wisdom teeth pulled out the other day & my face looks like a balloon, so i thought I might as well do this while I'm awake. THANX A LOT FOR ANSWERING MY QUESTIONS. IF YOU'D LIKE TO ADD ANYTHING FEEL FREE! THANX! If you want a copy of our debut album "GOOF ROCK HIGH" send me an email & we'll sort it out from there. Thanks for you'r support Burt, we appreciate it... |
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| mattyoung666@hotmail.com www.myspace.com/goofrockhigh www.myspace.com/UNCUTWHITENOISE www.myspace.com/THETIGERNAUGHTS |
| ALL PHOTOS & GRAPHICS COURTESY OF PILLOW INTERVIEWS MAIN PAGE |