How Alexis Taylor Is Following In Prince's Piano And A Microphone Footsteps

When told the last time this scribe saw an artist perform a show solo on piano was one of Prince's final Piano & A Microphone shows in February, 2016 - just around the corner from where Alexis Taylor is scheduled to play his upcoming Piano shows - the man known best as Hot Chip's frontman inquires, "How was it? I even considered trying to get out to Australia for one of those. I saw 'im quite a few times on other tours; I was lucky enough to see him in, you know, pretty small venues as well as massive stadiums and things but, yeah! I always wondered how those were. And it was a funny coincidence for me, 'cause I'd just made my solo Piano record and then was about to go out on tour, and did go out on tour. And it was a nice idea that Prince was also playing Piano & A Microphone so, yeah! I wish I'd seen some of those [shows]."  

There's bound to be a few more audience members attending Taylor's upcoming Piano shows who also saw Prince's Australian Piano & A Microphone shows - no pressure, though. Taylor laughs, "The thing about those Prince shows - I've heard recordings of them and, I mean, he's obviously just such a wonderful musician and pianist that it's effortless for him to play any of his songs in that context, you know? Whereas some of us mere mortals have to kind of just focus on the things that we feel, like, really translate to the piano based on our limited ability to play it really well. But Prince is obviously a master of the instrument, so it's nice hearing him do those more rhythmic tracks as well."  

Since the release of his Piano album in 2016, Taylor has toured the UK and a few festivals in solo mode. He also recently played in Lithuania and adds, "I'm also gonna be in New York playing, this week, a coupla times.

"It's been really good, because [the show's] been well received and it's a very different feeling from any other gigs I've done - including Hot Chip and other solo shows - just because of the nature of it being often kind of seated venues with a grand piano, and people calling out for requests and things so, yeah! It's been really fun." Do punters really yell out requests? "They do when I ask if people have any, yeah."

On whether anyone's ever requested something completely random that's not even part of his back catalogue, Taylor admits, "Yeah, there was one where I was playing in Bristol and somebody called out for a song that we had covered in Hot Chip, by Fleetwood Mac, called Everywhere. And I pointed out that it had been a while since I'd played that one, but I could probably remember most of it, but if the person in the audience knew any better than me they could come up and play it with me. So I didn't really expect that they would, but they did! They rushed up on stage and made some space on the piano stool, sat next to me, and launched into a very sort of technically brilliant performance of this Fleetwood Mac song, which made me feel like the last 80 minutes of the gig hadn't really been worthwhile, 'cause I can't really play the piano as good as them. And then I sang along with them and, yeah! That was quite fun until we both didn't really know how the last third of the song went so it came to a bit of a sort of disastrous end but, yeah! That kind of thing happens every now and again; I suppose that's the danger of being open-minded to requests, including members of the audience getting on stage."

"I'd just made my solo 'Piano' record and then was about to go out on tour... and it was a nice idea that Prince was also playing just a Piano And A Microphone."

Taylor had originally intended to add some strings to Piano and long-time Hot Chip collaborator Vince Sipprell was on board, but then the violinist sadly passed before the work was done. This must have been quite a shock for Taylor. "It was," he allows, "because he'd worked on every record that I've made, pretty much - in one way or another, whether it's Hot Chip or solo things, he's always contributed and I just always had him in my mind as somebody that would come in and maybe play on two of those tracks, or more than that. And I knew he would write something very sensitive to the music I'd made that wouldn't suddenly mean that, well, by adding strings I would then wanna add loads more layers. You know, I thought he would do something very, very perfect to go with that kind of simple, bare setting. I'd made with the record and he said he was up for doing it, but then by the next time I would've been wanting to get in touch with him that wasn't possible anymore 'cause he was no longer very well and, yeah, then he died. So I had made most of the record before that happened, before he passed away. But one of the tracks I recorded; I only recorded it after he passed away and that was one of his brothers' songs... and that was a song called Just For A Little While. So he still had quite an influence on the record in a strange kind of way, 'cause I'd been thinking about him - and thinking of including him - and then when he wasn't able to be included I put that song on as a tribute to him. And so that was, at least, a nice way to kind of connect the music to him in that way."

We're curious to find out whether Taylor has ever performed at a funeral. "I have," he enlightens. "I recently performed with Joe [Goddard] and Al [Doyle] from Hot Chip at Felix [Martin] from the band's dad's funeral, and we played Alley Cats by Hot Chip and Shooting Star by Bob Dylan; Felix and Felix's brother had known that their dad had really loved both of those songs so, yeah, I have done that, but not on any other occasion. And obviously it's a very sort of intense thing to do, but also I just remember feeling that as long as the family and people there enjoyed that music, or felt like it was something they wanted to hear, then that was really what it was all about. So it may have been kinda nerve-racking, but we weren't going through the things that they were going through. So that was kind of nice to sort of be asked to do it and to be involved with it.

"And also we did a gig as Hot Chip a year after Vince had died that was a nice celebration of his friends, and his music, and people around him. And that actually was quite - it felt like a really kind of nice musical moment. And we played as Hot Chip, but without doin' it in sort of a dancefloor direction that we'd normally go in, and it seemed to actually work really well; a slightly kind of more ballad-based set, but with most of the band playing - still a full sound and, yeah! Loads of people seemed to appreciate it in that context."

So has Taylor ever given any thought to which songs he would choose to play at his own funeral? "There's one song by Robert Wyatt called Memories Of You, which is an old jazz standard originally but Robert Wyatt's version of that is one that I have thought; it's such a lovely song and a song that means a lot to me, but there's something about somebody singing about all they have is memories of you that feels like it would be suited to that occasion... how much the song would be speaking to people there, I s'pose, so, yeah! That's the only one I've ever thought about.

"I think I would need to think of something else as well to counterbalance the kind of sadness of that song. Um, it's good that you're having this conversation with me so that I can think ahead! I'd really only thought of that miserable song - it's not miserable but, you know, a rather sombre song so, yeah! I need a bit more balance." What about the Pet Shop Boys version of Always On My Mind, which is kind of wistful and celebratory all rolled into one? "Yeah, that's true. That's a favourite song of mine as well. The Willie Nelson version, particularly." Come to think of it, this kind of 'dancing with tears in your eyes' vibe is very much the sonic territory of Hot Chip! "That contrast is part of the sort of essence of Hot Chip, I think," Taylor points out. "The music can be quite exuberant at times, and joyful, and the singing is meant to be, you know, capturing joy and sorrow. It doesn't have to do that on every song, although it's definitely something that goes on in the music, so that tension between those things is a big part of it."

And this "contrast" filters all the way down to Hot Chip's merch, which saw Hot Chip teaming up with the clothing label TSPTR for a line featuring Charles M Schulz's Peanuts characters. "Well that's the thing about Peanuts, isn't it? Those characters are very sort of adult and philosophical in their statements about the world," Taylor offers, "although they're just cartoons and they're for children... There's the one where - I think it's Linus is saying, 'I love mankind, it's people I can't stand'. They're quite kind of grown-up, witty views on the world. And what we did with our [merch] was: we were given the rights to use the images but to use our own Hot Chip lyrics on the back... I do think some of those Hot Chip lyrics are kind of a little bit in the Peanuts quote kind of [territory]." And it turns out the Peanuts collab was Taylor's idea. "The vintage 1960s Peanuts sweatshirts that those ones were based on, I'd been collecting them on my travels around the States - and often in Japan you find them as well; they're very collectible things, quite expensive old sweatshirts. I've just got a kinda huge archive of them now and I just love them. I mean, I was wearing one just yesterday."

We've just gotta ask whether there's any new Hot Chip brewing. "We will be brewing some soon, but we've not reeeeaaally put the kettle on yet," Taylor teases. "We've done some recording recently, but I wouldn't wanna make it sound like we're working on the album yet, we're more at the sort of talking about what we wanna do stage. So we will be beginning it in earnest this year and carrying on into next year, working on that. But at the moment I'm just recording another solo record that isn't just on my own at the piano, it's working with a producer on it and it's quite different-sounding. And Joe's on tour doing his solo stuff. We're all doing our own things at the moment.

"We're doing a Hot Chip show tonight, actually, in London, but it's only a small thing for the charity Amnesty International so, yeah! It's gonna be quite stripped-down not dissimilar to the solo piano stuff I do, but it isn't just piano there's a few of us playing and we've got some other instruments. We're actually debuting this nice machine that plays the drums for you. It's something that you can program and you place beaters - one beater per drum - and then they are kind of just fixed to the drum stand and then they can hit the snare drum, the kick drum and the hi-hat and you can just program it to play whatever you want. So we're debuting a way of doing that tonight in this kind of small charity gig. So although we're not, like, deep into the new record we are getting together and working on stuff."

It sounds to us as if Hot Chip are gearing up to replace themselves with robots. Taylor laughs, "I guess Kraftwerk did that before us. Maybe we can replace ourselves with Kraftwerk."