BBC Manchester 7th September 2005



Still the Greatest?


Few could have predicted Ian Brown's solo success, but after four successful albums, his new collection, The Greatest, has a title with a ring of truth to it. We caught up with him to talk about his music, collaborations and being called an icon.


Why's the album called The Greatest?
"You've got a greatest hits, do you call it a best of? Do you call it the greatest hits? Forever And A Day: the greatest hits after one of my songs? A lad at the record company who was a big Roses fan back in the day, who'd followed me before he got the job at Polydor, said 'why don't you call it The Greatest'? So I phoned a few pals up that I've known for years and years and they just started laughing and said 'go for that. It's a great one.' So there you go."

What do you think the greatest track on there is?
"F.E.A.R. I think F.E.A.R has got the best lyrics. If someone else wrote it and I heard it, I'd think the lyrics were clever. And I like the sound of it. I was listening a lot to Classic FM and I like the sound of the violins and all, but I was missing that that you get in electric music. It's full volume and it's really quiet, those classical tracks. I wanted a classical track that we approached as if they were guitars going through Marshall amps, so we turned everything up and squeeze as much as we can out of it so it sounds really strong."

Why have you released a greatest hits collection now?
"I was working on my fifth album and I was asking the company what my release date might be, and they've turned and said 'have you thought of doing a greatest hits now instead of after your fifth album, because it's likely that we'll release one after it?' It just made sense to me. If someone's going to suggest a greatest hits, who's going to turn it down? So I figured why not go with that and then, in the background, I can be working on more songs for my fifth, but they turned round and offered me another two album deal now, so I've got seven altogether."

The UNKLE and Noel Gallagher collaborations are on the album. Do you enjoy working with other artists?
"I love it. It's great to come up with ideas on your own, but it's never as good as when you share it with someone, or you come up with an idea and they bounce of you; it's like two heads are always better than one. And then the fun value, working with different musicians, it's beyond a dream. I think I've worked with sixteen different musicians since I left the Roses and they're all, in their own right, great players. It stretches me, it makes me want to do even better."

Who would be your dream collaborator?
"I'd love it if Dr Dre would send me a load of beats over. I love his work, I love his production. I love the fact that within 15 seconds you can hear it and know that he's made that, that's a great achievement."

Are there any tracks on The Greatest that you'd change?
"I think everyone that makes music, the process of how it is, you write your ideas, you find your sound and eventually you let it go, there's always room for improvement. You think 'I wish I'd made the drums a bit heavier, I wish I'd changed the bass line, I wish I'd added a noise in here.' That's just the nature of the game. I wouldn't physically do anything to try and better it, it's just how it is at that time. You can always hear how you could have improved it. I can hear how I've improved working as the only boss, rather than having four bosses, along the way. I can hear from the early works how I've improved."

How do you think your music has changed since you started your solo career with My Star?
"I've still got a groove. Always with the Roses and that's what I've kept with my solo work; the thing about music that I like is music with a groove. But I think my lyrics have improved, I think the groove's sort of improved and I've settled into my own sound now."

Do you think you've improved with age?
"Yeah, I do. I'm supposed to have gone the other way but I don't feel like I have. I think each album has been an improvement on the one that preceded it, and that's what I set out to do. Each time I've started a new album, I've done it with a view to improve, and if it's not an improvement, I'll not release it until it is."

What fires that drive?
"I love music and I love the process of having nothing and making something, and then seeing where that something takes you. No matter who you are, you've no idea where your record's going to go. I love the process of it all; being on your own, working something up, bringing a pal in, watching it improve when he puts his thing on, getting it in the bag eventually."

On the live side of things, you've just headlined one of the stages at V. Do you enjoy festivals?
"Yeah, I love that. A lot of bands won't play festivals because you're not guaranteed a sound check, but I love that people are there to forget their problems for a weekend. When I play a show, it's my job for them to just bathe in music, for me to uplift everybody, for them to forget any problems they've got in their outside lives for that hour and a half. At a festival, you get a chance to hit people that have never come to see you specifically, they're just there and they're obviously music lovers. It's a big gathering of music lovers and I don't think we had such things when I was a kid."

Would you have gone if they had?
"Yeah, definitely. Music's always been number one to me."

The press release for the album calls you a music icon. How do you feel about being called that?
"It goes in one ear and out the other, like when people chant my name at a concert or when they call me a legend, I say 'yeah, in my own dinner time.' I just try and let it go, water off a duck's back. I don't think you can contemplate that kind of thing. It's not really healthy. I don't read fan letters; I haven't read a fan letter since 1989 for that reason. I think it'll bend your head. You've got to just stay true to yourself. People only want me to be me. That's why I've lasted so long, because I've not tried to act up, I've just been me."






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