Has technology caught up with the live performance, allowing you to do things now you couldn’t 20 years ago?
We definitely weren’t able to put it all together when we first started. It would have been incredibly difficult. As time moved on, I remember getting huge sampler racks, doing it all that way. Now I just need one little computer and I can kind of program all of the beats and get all of the samples off of the original record. We were quite lucky when we went back to the original tape for the (making of the) box set, we had access to the original sounds, isolated. So, we made good use of that. We’re actually playing the record closer to the album than we ever have.
And no elaborate light show or background visuals evoking the album or the time period?
No, absolutely not. We were never much of a band for messing around with productions too much. We kind of just wanted to present ourselves, not hide in any way. We’ve always felt that there’s so much happening onstage with Gomez that trying to distract people would be counterproductive.
Do you feel pressure to represent the record in an exacting way for those that cherish it so, or is it more important for you to be Gomez as the live band that you’ve always been and do it that way?
It’s a hard question. It’s important that we do what we’ve always done, but what we’ve always done is to sort of have a mind on giving people a kind of sense of creative energy in the band rather than a simple, straight-forward performance thing. We’ll often take the more difficult route to performing a song because we find that more exciting, ourselves. It’s more interesting. It’s not an either/or (situation).
But you do have people that know every groove.
People at the gigs sing every single word. Every bassline, even. It’s definitely a little bit different because we’re older, and we sound a bit different and we play different guitars now. What we’ve done is we’ve rearranged a lot of songs from how we used to play them live to make them closer to the record, but sometimes we say this song would would’ve been better if we’d done ‘this’ instead of ‘that.’ And when we hit upon those things, we’ve done it because it gives us a little bit of something else. They’re not big changes; little subtle changes.
In previous interviews the band has cited The Beatles’ Revolver as an inspiration, which is interesting because they made that album at the same they were giving up performing live. Did you consider as you were making this record the thought of having to perform it live?
This album, when we started it, we did not think the world was going to hear it. It was music made for ourselves and our friends. There was no intention of getting it to the world. We were holed up together with a 4-track machine. We’d hang out with loads of friends, go record some stuff, come back to the party, go record some stuff, come back to the party. That’s how it was when we were kids. It was just what we did for fun. When we started playing it live, we were terrified. Half the guys would be sick every night having to be performers, as opposed to these musos mucking around.
That’s why I found it an interesting parallel. Could you imagine The Beatles trying to perform Revolver or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band live?
They would’ve been fucked. (Laughs.) Yeah, we were fucked originally. We didn’t realize we were fucking ourselves.
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