The last interview in our Relentless Live series. Here’s what Pure Love had to say.
Introduce yourselves to anyone who might know yet who you are and what’s you’re about.
Frank: My names Frank Carter
Jim: Jim Carroll
Frank: And we’re your new favourite band, Pure Love.
Your first full length was released earlier this year, what’s it like to finally get a full length out? Frank:We finally got it out and we’d shared it and we were were pumped. We was on tour when it came out, so we was really excited to be playing new songs to everyone. It was a really good time and then our label dropped us like a month later. So it was a bit like, we’d waited a long time to put it out, finally got it out. I feel like we got a bit of a raw deal, we dealt a little bit of a bad hand. But it’s the end of the year, still smiling. Still wrote a really good record, it’s still out for there for people to buy.
Jim: As far as people’s reception of the record, it’s been great.
Frank: Yeah it’s been awesome
Jim: It’s just the fact that there was so much push, then it came out and there was no more push.
So how did you find the writing process this time? What was it like getting to work with the session musicians?
Frank: They’re just our friends. The strings were the bass players wife, Kate and she did an amazing job. It was just really nice; it didn’t really have a session musician vibe. We’re all really good friends. That just meant that the whole thing went really smooth and was just a really good vibe, surrounding the record. Obviously getting to work with Gil Norton was amazing. He’s made some incredible records and everyone who was a part of it still speaks about that now about how much fun they had. Just a really good time. High point of my life and I still look at it now and I have really fond memories. Was a really good time.
So big bands have always had amp sponsors and instrument sponsors. What’s it like to have Relentless as a sponsor, is it a different vibe?
Frank: It’s weird for us. The reason we got into it was down to one person. It just happened to be that the man who did all our music videos, his name is Ross Cairns. He’s done all our music videos, he’s a real friend of ours, been a real supporter of the band from the beginning and made all our music videos and it just happened that he’s, in his spare time, the creative director for Relentless. He just mentioned it to us and was like would you be adverse to this? Would this be something you might wanna do? And we were like yeah sure. We just trust him implicitly, that he won’t make us look like twats and he’ll let us do what we want and that’s exactly what’s happened. It’s been really good to us. It’s been nothing but positive and we’ve had a pretty good time to be honest. That’s why we did it, cause of Ross really. He’s a really good guy and we’ve got a lot of great footage out of it, had a good time. Got to play some shows.
Kids these days are very quick to band around the ‘selling out’ term and I understand why. But I don’t think they really appreciate what’s happening in the music industry now. There really is no money. It’s so quick and fickle and the turn around is so fast that it’s difficult to develop a band now. So what companies like Relentless do now, is they give you the opportunity to establish a band and develop your live show. I think that’s really important, I stand behind that. Without Relentless, I don’t know if we’d be where we are because it’s really expensive. All the session musicians get paid first before me and Jim. So Relentless allowed us to keep touring because tours are expensive. Back in the day you used to tour to support a record. You’d get all the money from record sales. And now that people don’t buy records, you don’t get any money for record sales. You get an advance if you’re lucky and you make all your money on the road and merch. And now everybody’s taking a piece of that, it’s difficult.
Jim: The thing is how I view it. If it wasn’t Relentless it would be a record label giving us money to continue. They were investors, that gave us money and they just happen to sell a product. Yeah they used our image along with what they sold. There’s a very fine line that you have to adhere to, it’s like you can’t be a complete whore for a brand. If it’s done tastefully, it’s basically like working with a friend for us. It wasn’t anything more than that.
So what are your plans for 2014?
Frank: A new record. And hopefully just have more fun. It’s great when you can make something like this a job, but you nobody starts a band to make money.
Jim: Some bands do
Frank: Ok. You should start a band to have fun and if you make some it’s a bonus. We made some money from this and it was great and now we’re making no money from this and that’s great as well. Maybe next year we’ll make some money from this. And if we don’t, I think I’ll still have a smile on my face; I just love playing rock ‘n’ roll.
Pure Love: Website|Facebook|Twitter
Image courtesy of James McCauley
