Long Read // Newton Faulkner on shedding hair and armour on new album 'OCTOPUS'
Aside from the release of his brand new album ‘OCTOPUS’, which is a celebration of the weight he’s shed by shaving off his hair, Newton Faulkner teamed up with Teenage Cancer Trust to release a bootleg version of the album and raise money for the trust. We spoke to Faulkner about the past, the present, and the future of his music and the relationship between himself and his fans.
We dive straight into the deep end as Faulkner elaborates on the creative process behind the writing of his music, but in particular his latest work. “I try not to rule out any form of input, (when I write music), Eric Roach was talking about rhythms, and that there is a rhythm to everything, even things you can’t hear, there’s rhythm to the shape of trees. It’s all there all the time, you just have to look for it. I feel the same about any subject matter. The thing that formed the album the most was the attitude going into it. My main job with this album was to get out of the way and just let it happen. This record is the first record I’ve ever made for which I haven’t tried to retrace any steps I’ve made before. There was nothing I tried to recreate from my past, I was really jumping headfirst forward and seeing what happened.”
On the new record we hear how the man and the musician behind these songs seems to finally move as he pleases, ignoring the expectations that come with having such a strong ‘brand’; “I used to ‘Newton Faulkner’ things a bit, there used to be such a sense of identity to what I did in the past, and shaving my head on one level is a totally superficial thing, but there was a lot of stuff other people attached to the hair that I was carrying around. Without it I could kind of move a lot freer. There was a sense of shedding of the weight in the past and doing whatever felt right with making this record."
As he mentioned before, people are amazing at giving things meaning, so is there anything Newton would like people to take from this new batch of releases? “I’ve stopped guessing what people would take from the album, the amount of people that come to me to talk about a song, and it’s always ‘Airports’, that seems to be the home of this album. If anyone taps me on the shoulder at an airport I kind of brace myself… Thinking they’re going to tell me a deeply personal story that I’m never going to forget.” It is the things we can’t control that often control us most, but what is it that inspires him to keep writing and releasing? “Sometimes I write because it’s therapy for myself, sometimes I write because I think it’s something someone else needs to hear, sometimes I write because of everything else that is going on in the world. What people do with that is so completely out of my control, so I’ve stopped trying to have any control over it. It doesn’t really matter what I think my music is about, that’s not really the point, it is what people bring to it.”
We then touched on his work with Teenage Cancer Trust and the version of the album that’s being released in aid of the trust. “I shaved my head for Teenage Cancer Trust, but I’ve done loads of events for them and I go to a lot of events they put on, and I saw the Sex Pistols at the Royal Albert Hall because they invited me. They were one of the first charities that I got involved with when my career first kicked off. They mean a huge amount to me. There’s a specific version of the album I stamped the first of today, they’re kind of bootleg versions of the album in plain cardboard sleeves with just the stamp on and nothing else. They’re £5 and £1 of every copy sold goes to the trust. Hopefully because it is a fiver we can raise a lot of money.”
We touch on what is next, when Faulkner reveals he’s not ready just yet, to move on from ‘OCTOPUS’; “I’ve been so into this album for a long time, I’ve nearly come up for air, but I won’t really come up for air for another two weeks. The week before release, the week after release, and once it charts that’s when it’s done and then I have to make my peace with whatever it’s done and move on with my existence in a way.” Soon, live shows will kick off, another form of the art he creates; the live shows. “Small shows are scarier, I think it is to do with the way the audience becomes “a crowd”, it feels like it is one giant thing. Whereas with small rooms it is hard to get past the point of a room being full of individuals. Both of them, though, are fascinating to me.”
His live shows are always a surprise, not just for the audience, but also for himself. “I quite like hitting the reset button completely, some nights I will go out and ban myself from saying anything I’ve ever said before. It’s either the funniest show I’ve ever done, or it’s the weirdest tumble-weedy thing, because I’ve taken all the safety points away. When I look back at things that hugely affected my live show was; Flaming Lips, that show was just so fun and unserious and brilliant, the other show that always comes into my head was Bobby McFerrin who I saw at the Royal Albert Hall. I was astonished that someone could come out with a microphone and pretty much zero plan and be amazing for two hours. The level of freedom I found incredibly inspiring.”
“I feed off that fear of people that are afraid of the awkward moments and I like to float around those awkward moments. I did create Newton Faulkner for a while, partly as a defence mechanism I think, but there was one night where I thought “I don’t need to put all my armour on, I think I’m okay. Let’s not suit up and see what happens”. It felt so much more honest and I was picking songs I felt like playing, not that were on the setlist, but I just wanted to do it! I don’t think I’ve ever really looked back.” That attitude and skillset comes from lots of live experiences, as well as creating a live show that is completely his own. “The whole kind of on your own, multitasking thing is fine if I don’t think about it. I built myself a weird little spaceship and I know how it works but no one else understands… The thing I do before shows now is to meticulously let go of stuff.”
He might hit the reset button, might not, might surprise, might simply entertain, the goal for Newton Faulkner is clear; “What I hope is that I can do the album justice, and that I can get enough of the energy across. It is such hard work, but so fun! I want to bring people into this new era, and I want it to sound as exciting as the record, I want it to feel like the beginning of something and I don’t want it to be more than just nice.”
Feature by Laura Rosierse
