Talking To... Divided Opinions
#N Listening to the songs you’ve got on MySpace, it’s more rock influenced than pop. Was that planned or did the direction changeduring thegap.
#J It was the way it was planned to be on my part. Even though what we were doing was approachable, it was folky pop. I was never comfortable with it, though there was no way you couldn’t dislike really. I was never comfortable with it. I’m a classical musician. Classical musical is powerful, not just baroque, but real classical music. I used to be a goth, when there were proper Goths.
#N The Mission etc.?
#J My taste in music wasn’t what we were playing. I could hear much better things for my songs, they had so many more layers to give. I also composed classical music. The old sound…I got fed up of being compared to the Corrs.
#N And you were there before them…I was trying to listen to the old cassettes and though they’re almost unplayable, but you can hear what the band was like. You could hear that there was more to come. You’ll probably hate me for saying this, but All About Eve…
#J Why would I hate you for saying that, they were one of my heroes.
#N They got that fey image that wasn’t right for the band.
#J I recently saw them live and they still rock.
#N You could feel that on the early demo. I think you were wanting to pull away, that there was somewhere you wanted to go and couldn’t quite do it at the time.
#J I want you to come and see us play to get a real idea of what we’re about. John and me we have such a unique sound. He’s got such a technique. I don’t want a perfect sound. I get that from the orchestra I play with. When I’m not in the orchestra I want to be a little bit wild and me and John work off each other. It’s so where I want to be now.
#N It’s going to sound a bit snobbish, but it’s something a real musician can do, and I know it’s the wrong phrase, but it’s understanding the structure of music.
#J That was a problem with the early Divided Opinion, it was too rigid, I couldn’t cut lose because the other’s didn’t like it, even though I’d written the songs.
#N Some bands can put a song together, but not understand the structure.
#J The very early Divided Opinions were all trained musicians but couldn’t break out of that. It also needs musicians that can do the more jazz thing of feeding of each other. We’re not jazz, but we’ve got that thing going. One of the songs that we’ve just put up is one of the old ones. It’s probably the most folky one we do now.
#N And folk lends it’s self so much to that. You can do so much with it.
#J Exactly. We get put in the folk category. It’s got folk chords, but none of us are from a folk background. We have this folk flavour, but the drummer is jazz, the guitarists is electro/ambient in his own little world type person, Dave is pure indie and I’m classical and apart from it being a violin, there’s no folk there but when you put it all together.
#N And I think you can hear the difference between generational folk and people that have come across it. I think they’ve listened to it differently and gives a different approach to the way they work the songs and the music needs that.
#J My early years of music were very regimented in a classical way, then I went and learned jazz violin and was rubbish at it, but I desperately wanted that element of freedom. It was listening to Irish folk in pubs that gave me a different idea. It’s music and it works. I’m lucky that I can do both. I still play in an orchestra.
#N What plans are there for releases?
#J We want to do some more gigging. We’re trying to line up some more dates. We’re going to be playing the Borderline. We’re getting some festival’s lined up. There’s also a radio session on the cards. There’s a rock producer that’s interested in working with us just to see what happens.
#N And a lot of rock people had folk connections.
#J It was funny the first time around when there were a lot of labels looking for us the one that I really wanted to work with didn’t really want us at the time, but they weren’t interested in us, but that was Cooking Vinyl. Hopefully they might like it this time around. If it’s meant to happen it will. I want to enjoy it. I’m not going to make myself ill. If it’s time it’s time. We still work very hard because we want to do it right.
#N Thanks very much. All the best and I hope it does work for
you.
Joolz and Divided Opinions can be found at www.myspace.com/dividedopinions