How does the songwriting process work with such a large group?
It’s a fucking mess. It’s a lesser mess than it used to be, back when I literally carried around black garbage bags full of lyrics with me. Yes, overall there aren’t really any rules, but I am the principal songwriter of the band. It’s just the way it’s happened from the beginning. It became my main discipline. I bring the songs pretty much completed to the band.
And then they add with their parts?
They add a lot, but sometimes I’ll play a song and instantly their reaction shows zero resonance. That’s how I know that song was not a “Bohemian Rhapsody,” no matter what I thought (laughs).
Gogol is known to be an amazing live show. Do you enjoy the performing aspect more than making records in the studio, or are both just as important?
Absolutely equal. Touring is important, and recording is important. Every band faces that challenge. In a way there’s a lot of myths floating in press and amongst people about records being done in some kind of a psychedelic state of mind, and how they just captured the magic, and how all these people were just on some sort of synergetic fire and it just came out like that. All those myths are absolute loads of crap. I’ve met all those people that made all those magical albums and they told me how it was done. It’s absolutely done redundantly, laboriously, and tediously. It has nothing to do with any spontaneous magic. It’s a very crafty thing to do, just like making movies, which is even more annoying. At least with records you don’t have to wake up at six in the morning and put on safari clothes and freeze your ass off for 23 hours (laughs).
That’s why it must be nice to have so much energy in the live performance. You can go out there and enjoy it.
It’s the most fun and fulfilling artistic experience I can have. Not to say I don’t enjoy writing, or the catharsis of writing, that’s all great stuff, but playing live allows you complete freedom from the mind. The work is done; it’s already crafted. Now you’re just recklessly playing what has been created. Somewhere between the clash of the recklessness and what has been crafted there is a spark that makes the eyes light up, and that’s the atmosphere that the soul just loves. Not just my soul, but also every soul loves the sparkling eyes. There’s mystery in why it happens, but it ain’t no mystery that we all love it.
In giving the crowd this experience, how do you hope your music will make people feel?
Many different kinds of feelings are in the mix, but I feel like predominantly a feeling of belonging together. It’s quite a rare instance in this civilization. This civilization, not to knock down its accomplishments, but has happened to almost exhaust itself of giving unity, which is detrimental and is damaging to the very individual who is promoting the individualist idea. Most of the western civilizations are locked in the individuals’ heads. They don’t see any way out of it. They’re completely convinced that they’re greatest facility is intellect, and that’s actually such an ironic situation because the rest of the world that maybe doesn’t have such a higher technology, but has other tools, not only have survival, but actual spiritual elevation, and their method of life is the opposite. It’s something for the west to consider, that they’re actually the minority who is locked in their head. On this very planet the majority doesn’t believe that. They don’t think that, they’re ancestors don’t think that, and I think that some of the cultures are going to skip that stage altogether of driving themselves into an egomaniacal state. Evolution sometimes just jumps the gun and skips forward into quantum leaps. That happens too.
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