Bent Sæther – Motorpsycho – Interview Exclusive
Written by Dom Daley
Wednesday, 24 November 2010 05:00
As an interviewer being given the task of fronting five or six questions to someone who has spent the best
part of twenty odd years fronting a band as innovative as Motorpsycho is never going to be an easy task.
That however was the position I found myself in a week or so ago when I got the chance to speak with the band’s bassist and singer Bent Sæther, and what follows is a ten minute lesson in everything you need to know but possibly didn’t know about the band known as Motorpsycho.
Hi there Bent, thank you for taking the time to talk with us at Über Röck. After twenty something years together amazingly some of our readers may still not have heard Motorpsycho – can you describe your music for those people?
Hi there Über Röck! We’re a fairly eclectic band that have been at it for a loooong time, so it’s impossible to define us as anything but a mishmash of twenty years of playing and searching for the infamous IT, you know! These days we seem to be heading into a more primal thing, though, where energy is as important as harmony, and riffs feel more true than chords, if you get my drift?
At heart we’re improvisational beings, and so there’s a lot of that going into it too… I dunno, Motorhead playing Mahavishnu? Sleep playing Neil Young? Your call!
Out of all the gigs you’ve played what would you say was the best gig and what would you say was the most bizarre gig you played where things went wrong sort of a Gig From Hell?
Our drummer went through a phase a long time ago, where he played in the buff. That’s all fine, until the one gig where he got so into the music that he got up, jumped about and sat down quite forcefully without …eh, how to phrase this… you get the idea. Let’s just say he got up again in a jiffy, and refused to sit down again for a few hours! Oh, this was just before he stepped on a pint-glass, and had to finish the tour playing with his hi-hat foot on a pillow, looking like a royal old knob with gout!
You’ve just celebrated your 20th anniversary with a vinyl only release, what advice would you give to aspiring young bands just starting out, what have you learnt from being in the business for 20 years?
Oh, where to start? I dunno if you’re asking the right band these questions since we’ve been at it for 20 years and you never heard about us before (!), but… It seems like bands these days are more preoccupied with their careers – biz, images, PR, what have you – than their music. We’ve sort of operated on a ‘quality will prevail’ line, and have … well, at least prevailed! We’ve been doing our own thing regardless for so long, that we’ve been hip thrice, un-hip as many times, won awards for best and for worst…you know, it becomes a life after a while, and the novelty wears off. That’s when focusing on what you can affect (the music, not much else) really becomes important. Focus on that, be sceptical to everything else, and you’ll be fine.
Tell us who are your biggest influences musically and what are your favourite records?
That varies daily, but we grew up on NWOBHM and later hardcore, everything else sprung from there. But lately a lot of Soft Machine and proggy stuff as well as avant-jazz, rediscovering The Swans and bands from that era. My 4yr old is heavily into Maiden, so I’ve had a Nicko McBrain summer…
All time favourite record? MC5 – ‘Kick Out The Jams.’
What’s the music scene like in Norway these days? (We were certainly very sad over in the UK to hear about Turbonegro splitting up)
Most of the good stuff seems to come out of the jazz scene here now. Jaga Jazzist are up and running again, Shining’s ‘Black Jazz’ album was really happening, bands like Monolithic and Killl are also combining extreme metal with free music and inventing interesting stuff… In rock, Serena Maneesh are on 4AD and seem to be going places, but we’re in the middle of one of those ‘why not sing in your native language’-discussion phases again, and it’s all about the words now, so most of that music really sucks diametrically. The exception is obviously Kvelertak and bands outta that scene that are absolutely fierce.
What are your thoughts on the music industry in 2010? Is it any better or worse than it was 10 or 20 years ago?
It’s the same, but the media have changed, and the power has shifted from the labels to other agents: managements, booking agencies, festivals…
It’s still a biz of vultures living off the ambitions of the young – It’s inherent in the whole thing, and pretty depressing. The lifespan of bands/artists/albums is a lot shorter too and that makes it an even more frenetic and ‘quick-buck’ biz, which is a shame because a lot of really good artists don’t get to grow and become themselves, and a lot of good music just drowns in the deluge.
With that my time was up, so if you’re still wondering what Motorhead playing Mahavishnu actually sounds like why not check out the band’s Myspace or website for a little bit of Motorpsycho.