Flying the flag for red-blooded rock ‘n’ roll, The New Roses seem to get better with each album, their current effort, entitled Nothing But Wild, a perfect example of the band’s penchant for blazing guitars and addictive melodies. With lead single down by the river capturing a potent mix of nostalgia and adrenalin, it’s clear that Nothing But Wild is a record that captures the heart of The New Roses – exploring their roots whilst attempting to capture the same sense of energy and excitement that the band bring to the stage. We caught up with front man Timmy Rough who kindly took us through the development of the album.
First and foremost, how have you found the band to be growing in the wake of one more for the road and secondly in the wake of all the amazing touring you’ve been doing?
Yeah, it’s been a crazy – really crazy time for us – because, you know, the success we have, it didn’t come over night. Every step of the way we’ve fought really hard to take each little step further. So, for us, it actually didn’t feel (while we were doing it) that we’d made such a big step as it might seem from outside. When you’re in the middle of it, you just fight every night and every battle as powerfully as you can.
So, now that we have a new album and people ask about the last two years, I am starting to realise how much has happened in the last two years and how different everything was two years ago. Especially when I speak to people like you, who spoke to me back then… and it’s only one record ago and, in between, so much has happened and we played so many shows and we grew constantly, but we didn’t realise the growth. It’s like watching grass grow! In the end, it gets really high, but you cannot see it or measure it, you know. So, to look back now and see how much we’ve grown is really fascinating to me.
Throughout all that touring, obviously you managed to set some time aside to record a new album, so my first question about Nothing But Wild is how did the writing process work? Were you able to demo out on the road and get the songs into shape that way?
You know, I collect ideas during the touring: the cities we visit, the stages we play, the people we meet, the chats I have, the pictures I see, the smells I inhale; everything can be a hint for something that is worthy of a song. I try to collect that and I always carry a little notebook where I just write thoughts, ideas, pictures, lines… stuff like that. And then, later, when we’re home, when I have the time to actually focus on song-writing, I take these ideas and turn them into songs. I have tried to write a whole song on tour but, at the moment, we don’t have the time to really dive into a song and look for its core. It would be dangerous because I think that the songs would be in danger of turning out like the tip of the iceberg. That’s why I only collect the ideas to get the content of the songs and then I really dive into it when I have the time, at home, in my music room. Then I turn them into demos, show them to the guys, they pick out their favourite demos and then we turn these demos into New Roses songs together.
It’s always interesting to me – I was speaking to an artist who is more in the blues rock genre, but in that genre, as well as in rock ‘n’ roll, there’s a language there that’s recognised, but at the same time, it’s important to keep it fresh and relevant.
I don’t think about it, I just realise it when I go too far! When I go too far and it’s too cheesy or too cliché, then my inner alarm system rings and then I go “no, no, no – OK – you pushed it a little too far there!”
But I just keep writing, you know? I grew up with rock ‘n’ roll and I really dug my way into it, so deep, that I know I have the right language and I know the right pictures and I have enough self-esteem to think that I know what I’m doing there. Only, like I said, when I push it too far, my inner alarm rings: “no, no, no – cliché police! Drop that cliché!”
One of the things that I’m really happy about with this record is that you’ve added some bonus tracks – some unplugged versions – and I think that’s really cool that you have stripped some of your songs back in that way and you can hear, even without all the amplification, that you’ve got a great song at the core…
With down by the river, it was a natural decision because I wrote all these songs pretty much on the acoustic guitar that I was playing on that track. The second song, fight you leaving me, was a song that we played as an acoustic version on the last tour and we thought it might be nice for the audience who saw us on that last tour to get a little memory of that tour. So, we decided to pick, not only a song from the new record as a bonus track, we picked a song from the last record that we played on the tour.
With the opening track, I think you’ve pretty much topped your previous albums with soundtrack of my life – it’s such a great start and it kinda taps into that classic anthemic vein that you want from a rock ‘n’ roll band – how did that song come about – was it a challenge to get it right?
Every song is a challenge when you want to push it to a certain level of quality. Soundtrack of my life, I wanted… the chorus was easy to write because I had that line – “come on, make it loud, the soundtrack of my life” – so I had that line and that’s all you need for that song… but to find the right groove, the instrumentation and that stuff – that was a challenge and finally we decided to pick a double bass groove, which is very unusual for our style and our band. But, because we wanted to be as powerful as possible and combine – that was my idea – to combine that metal groove, that double bass groove, with a walking bass, which is, you know from old school (very old-school) blues rock… you know? [sings a straight up rock ‘n’ roll motif]
So, we wanted to combine that with the metal drums – that was my idea of it, to combine these two spirits into one, very aggressive, but very funny and joyful piece. That was the challenge of that song.
It’s a wonderful, joyful style of music and there’s an escapist element that’s really important – is it difficult to get the balance between lyrics that have emotional resonance and, at the same time, a sense of joy?
Yeah, that’s the foundation of this band, because we want to make straight, rock ‘n’ roll music – very simple, very catchy… we like big choruses and stuff like that but, at the same time, we want to keep some content, some poetry, some meaningful thoughts and we want to combine all that. But, if it goes in one direction too far, then it’s not the New Roses any more. If we drift off and just play senseless, meaningless stuff like “put your hands up in the air and wave it like you just don’t care!” I think the spirit would die… but if we go too far into it and write songs about, I don’t know, philosophy and stuff that’s really deep and really hardcore… you would lose that spirit as well, so we’ve always walked that fine line and tried to keep it simple, but still have some meaning and some message in our songs.
How was the new album recorded? Was it tracked predominantly live?
We tour so much, we’re so focused on being a live band, that we don’t have a lot of time to record our records. We don’t have a lot of time to play around and stuff, so that’s why we recorded this album in the same style as all the other records – the same studio, the same system. And that’s because, when we started recording, we had no budget; we recorded in more like a garage studio, it was very small. So we couldn’t play together because the room was too small to set all the gear up together, but it worked out so well… We liked the studio, we liked the guy and everything, so much that we just decided to come back and come back and come back and that’s why we still record using the same system. So, everybody plays after each other, yeah, but we all work the songs out together.
It’s something that’s not often discussed, but it’s really important for a band to feel comfortable in the studio and in their environment – so it makes a lot of sense to me for you to go back to the same place.
Yeah, but you know, to be fair, it’s not like an inner-feeling kind of decision. It’s very practical. We tour so much that we have no time for experiments. If we would try a new studio and a new concept of recording and it would turn out wrong, then we would be fucked! We would have no time to repeat the recording session, you know, so that’s why we do it this way. We know what we get, we know how it works, so we can build on that foundation, and that’s why we keep going back to what we did.
The only thing we did differently this time is that we hired a top producer to work on this record with us. His name is Uwe Sabirowski, he worked on a German successful bands like the Beatsteaks and we’ve known him for a long time, but this is the first time we’ve worked together and he had a very, very constructive distance to the songs and to the band, so he could add or subtract stuff that we were blind to because we’re so involved in everything.
So, that helped to shape the songs and he encouraged me in a lot of songs to change the key to a lower level so that I wouldn’t have to shout too much or scream, because I always thought that it’s a foundation of the song or an element of the song that my voice is always giving 100% and it sounds very aggressive, but he said “no, the songs can carry themselves. Your songs have grown so much over the years, they can carry themselves now. You don’t need to shout or scream to draw the attention. The songs can work this way, so you can sing in a lower key and the songs will do the job.” So, he encouraged me many times and I’m very thankful for that because I really think it lifted the songs to a new level.
It’s interesting to note that, across the course of your career, rock ‘n’ roll seems to have grown in popularity once more – have you felt there’s a greater interest than there was maybe five or ten years ago?
I don’t care about these things too much. My spirit in all these questions is that, you know, these days you can go to Ikea and buy everything you need for your house or apartment or whatever and you might think, because in every town there is an IKEA now, people that make tables or furniture will not be needed anymore in this world, but if you make such an awesome table that you can buy nowhere but in your store, you will sell it, you know.
And that is our recipe since day one. We never asked “is the product in fashion at the moment?” We asked ourselves “is the product good? Is it just good?” You know. Not if it’s in fashion or how many clicks or views or likes. We just thought that way and that is my inner spirit since day one. If you do something and it’s really good, it’ll work. If it’s in fashion or not, there will always be people who will like good songs whether it’s rock ‘n’ roll or jazz or whatever. And you now, jazz is something that’s never been number #1 popular, but it’s lived for so many years because there’s always somebody that does a really good job playing jazz, I don’t know, trombone or something. If you’re a really good trombone player, you can make a living from that, so this is something I learned for myself – I didn’t argue or complain about rock ‘n’ roll being popular or that it was easier for Guns ‘n’ Roses to become famous. I don’t waste my time on this, I just focus on getting the best out of myself as possible – the best voice, the best song, the best guitar playing, the best guitar solo, whatever. I try to really, really improve what I’m able to do and then, I put it out and see what happens. This is, I guess, the spirit of The New Roses.
That spirit is very evident in the new single, down by the river, could you tell us a little more about that single and why you chose that as the lead track for the album…
You know, it was just a matter of time until I would write a song like that because we grew up along the Rhine and we grew up in the Rhine Garden area, which is very famous for wine but not for rock ‘n’ roll music, so we grew up there and everybody made their experiences with girls and beers and cigarettes during that phase of our lives so, of course, sooner or later I would write a song about that. And that song turned out to be one of those songs that everybody liked. We had a very luxurious problem with this record because the record company, the management, the fans, the radio stations – everyone we showed the record to in preview, picked different songs as their favourite song… but everyone agreed on ‘down by the river’ and we thought the attitude is so positive and so joyful that it would be a nice first impression to give from this record because we wanted to start off in a positive, joyful way. That’s why we picked that as the first single.
