One In A Million

The day Frank Turner's interview takes places marks the 7 year anniversary of the demise of his hardcore band Million Dead, essentially too, his birth as a solo singer/songwriter. Calling from New Orleans, whilst on tour with his backing band The Sleeping Souls, the thirty-year-old is in a nostalgic mood. Exhibiting the charisma that has made his music so accessible and the strength of character to overcome criticism, he knows his music won't please everyone, but isn't going to stop trying.

“When Million Dead broke up, the prospects of me having any sort of future in playing music were dim, particularly if I was going to do a complete stylistic left hand turn,” he reflects. “My ambitions were modest.  The idea of being able to make a full time living and maybe travel a bit as a musician was as far as I was thinking at the time. So I'm quite proud of what I have achieved.”

Proud he should feel. Some of those achievements include releasing four full-length albums, touring the world, selling out Wembley Arena, appearing on Conan, and biggest of all, performing at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. “It was a surreal experience,” he recalls with humour. “We weren't really playing to a crowd; we were on a fake hill with a bunch of sheep in a stadium. We knew there were a million people watching on TV but you can't really fell that.“

A career defining moment personally and artistically, you get the sense that like the athletes in the ceremony, Turner too was representing his country. “At the end of the day the main thing for me is, despite the fact that I'm not really a nationalist or a patriot or anything like that, there is a part of my blackened soul that flickered a little bit about being part of the only Olympic Games in my country, in my lifetime. It is a privilege to be part of that. You can take everything else away from it, but this one I can keep and it's always going to be the case that I played the Olympic Opening Ceremony.”

Performing I Still Believe from his record England Keep My Bones to a full stadium and an estimated television audience of 25 million, Turner makes no qualms of his pride for his country. “As far as the title of the record goes, one of the things for me is that there is such a thing as Americana, which is a separate thing from American patriotism. It's a celebration of aspects of American culture, which isn't chest beating and strident flag waving; it has a lovely tinge of sepia melancholy to it. I feel that if Americans are allowed to celebrate their culture in that way, without necessarily being tedious flag waving nationalists, then I should be able to do the same thing about England.”  

Turner, who no longer includes Thatcher Fucked The Kids in his set list due to its political associations, has recently come under scrutiny from sections of the British media. Raised in the affluent suburb of Winchester and privately educated at Eton College, Turner was labeled a “right wing” “twat” by Labor MP Kerry McCarthy. It caused a stir of controversy, with Billy Bragg, who supported Turner earlier in the year, buying in to the debate with an opinion piece in The Guardian. Turner, though, isn't particularly phased. “It's a price of being successful,” he acknowledges. “As you get more successful, there are people out there, some of them are critics, some of them just don't like what you do, and that's all fine and completely legitimate, but some of them are just contrarians who are trying to get under your skin. It comes with the territory. If you're going to be successful at something then you will be exposed to people who don't care for it.”

Revealing the constant vitriol can become disparaging, Turner admits it's something he is slowly getting use to. “I'm getting better as time goes by. If this is the only price I have to pay for being successful in the thing that I love and that I have been trying to do for years, then I think it's an easy bargain for me to make on a personal level.”

Whether he likes it or not, Turner's increased profile has meant more people are now paying attention to what he has to say, fans or otherwise. In June, after playing at Scottish Festival T In The Park, Turner took to Twitter, airing his grievances with Nicki Minaj, the pop princess, who was 55 minutes late for her set. Calling Minaj a “selfish shithead,” to his 76,000 online followers, the diva's camp bit back. “The whole Nicki Minaj thing was so titanicly boring,” he laments. “I honestly didn't have any idea who she was prior to all of this kicking off and I was not aware that she had 50 million Twitter followers, or whatever it is. If I had done, I probably wouldn't have bothered because I didn't want to spend the next week of my life having conversations about it.”

Having played T In The Park, The Olympic Games Opening Ceremony and sold out Wembley Arena already this year, Turner admits a recent live television appearance on Conan, was as nerve racking as they come. “There are not many stages you can put me on in the world that I'm not familiar with and can't feel comfortable on. Playing a gig to an audience, I know how to do that. That's what I do, play a billion shows. But there's something about TV people. They seem to operate on panic mode 24 hours a day. There's always someone with a headset running around shouting at you. There's an audience there, but they aren't necessarily people who are into your music. It's just not my comfort zone, so I get nervous.”

Pushing his comfort zone again, this month, Turner will head to America to record his fifth album. Working alongside producer Rich Costey, whose credits include Arctic Monkeys, Supergrass and Bloc Party, Turner confesses there are trepidations of becoming a cliché and loosing his band's English identity. “I was a little wary, and I still am a little bit, about recoding in the USA. It's such cliché: 'English band does reasonably well, ends up recording in America, gets porn star girlfriend, a Cadillac and cocaine problem,' which is not what I want to do. Rich Costey, in my opinion is a genius and has made some of my favourite albums. At the end of the day he records in Los Angeles, so I'm going to him for that reason. It's important to me that my music is English, that it sounds English and that it reflects where I come from.”

The album, Turner says, set for a release to coincide with his Australian tour in March, won't sound too different from England Keep My Bones, though is strictly not about England. “It's not a million miles away from England Keep My Bones. I'm always slightly nervous talking about it before I've recorded it, because I don't want to pick it apart and break the creative process somehow. I can tell you it's not a record about England, I feel like I've done that. It's turned into a breakup record, without going in to detail,” he reveals reluctantly and for the first time in the interview, showing his introverted side.

Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls will be playing at the following shows:

Thursday 28 March to Monday 1 April - Byron Bay Bluesfest, Byron Bay NSW