Jason Pierce New York City

I'm not certain when this interview took place. Probably in 1998, when Spiritualized were touring to support Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space. That album and subsequent tour found the band at the height of its powers, even though Jason Pierce would usually stand there in some narco-trance, completely dazed, eyes closed, hand barely strumming the guitar, the words blurred, shadowy whispers. The guy's alluded to being a junkie so many times in his lyrics, but in this interview he comes across as serious, boastful, and just shy of cranky. At the time, Ladies and Gents was available domestically in a jewel case, or as a pricey import with the disc sealed inside a foil sleeve like a pill, tucked inside a box that also contained a "patient product information" sheet telling you how to adjust your dosage, etc. The band's previous album Pure Phase, was also available in a glow-in-the-dark plastic case. Fun times.

_________________________________________________________________________

You know, I've seen Spiritualized three times. Why do you only play "Walking with Jesus" from the Spacemen 3 days?

We vary it, I guess. Basically, we just don't remember what we played the last time we came out there. So occasionally we replicate what we did before. We haven't been doing that song for a while, but it's still relevant. It's still very timely. I've never seen the Spacemen 3 stuff as being crowd-pleasers, but I loathe that old way of working --- that we could possibly turn into some weird cabaret act where we just go through the motions, or sort of an American idea of just playing your MTV song as faithfully as possible, so people can see it on MTV. There's no point in us faithfully reproducing it cabaret style.

Your glow-in-the-dark t-shirts and limited-edition CDs seem to have people wondering what you're going to do next.

I think people were waiting on the music, actually, not just the packaging. We just didn't want to put our records out in cheap plastic jewel boxes that everybody was using. We wanted to make a statement that music's too important to just throw out in the cheapest available box you can use -- and I guess it's gone on from there. These things are not limited in England at all -- they're only limited by people's imaginations in America. They couldn't work out how to rack them or how to stick security devices on them, so they were largely ignored.

The packaging on the limited-edition CD is easy to ruin accidentally.

You can always buy another one.

The booklet kind of carries your fascination with pharmaceuticals to a logical end.

Kind of. As it says on the literature, this music is medication for the heart and soul -- rather than abuse or the misuse of pharmaceutical drugs. Like I say, it's not encouraging prescription dug use, it makes a statement quite clearly on the packaging that music is the medication involved here. The thing that comes out of it is a CD, for chrissakes! So I think that's made very clearly.

I'm glad you are working with Dr. John. I understand how New Orleans music must affect you.

We were getting a piano player in England to play in the style of Dr. John, and that seemed kinda foolish, when he was only a telephone call away. So I sent a tape out to him and gave him at telephone call and he came out immediately and said, yeah, he'd love to get involved with that. And he's become more involved. He just seems to really understand what we're doing. There's a musical link between what he does and what we do.

The soul and gospel link.

But not just that - there's no compromise within the whole of his life's work. He's never done anything that seem to be compromised him as an artist. And we've always had exactly the same attitude, that we're not gonna compromise. There is no compromise in our music - it's honest and there is no compromise to anything. Whereas a lot of stuff seems to buckle under the weight of marketing or the idea of getting all successful -- by listening more to what the record company wants to do.

What would Spiritualized do, if the band was suddenly to become much more successful?

I've always seen the registers of the success as being pretty abstract, unless you're in the business of running a record label. The charts reflect the speed of record sales, not the quality of the music, so number 4 or 5 in the charts doesn't mean 4th best, it just means 4th fastest selling record. I've always seen success as putting out the record you want to do, and for me so many bands aren't successful because they put out record they aren't happy with. They only find, with subsequent releases, when they talk about how "this is the album were happy with" or "These are the songs we can listen to" or "We've reinvented ourselves" -- all these dumb lines come out. But I can't say that of any of the records we've released. I'm understandably happy with all of them. They're all finished projects. They're all taken as far out as way out as we could possibly take 'em.

You find that many groups won't stand by their first record?

Unfortunately for too many people, that's the shame of it. I was given a couple of records a couple of days ago by somebody who said, "This one I can kind of live with" -- and it just seems weird to want to do that - it's almost like you have to wait until your fifth release before you've actually got it together.

Live, Spiritualized presents a dynamic, gigantic, overwhelming sound.

We've always have that kind of thing way back from Spacemen. It's always been emotive. It's always been soul music. It's always been to do the highest highs and the lowest lows. It's not about getting a mediocre response - we're not dealing with mediocrity. We're not dealing with that middle ground. We're dealing with subjects like "Broken Heart" or "Electricity" - they're extremes. I think that's the way you move people, by dealing with things larger than life. You don't say, "Hey, I'm kinda sad today," you write "Broken Heart" or you don't say "Hey, this is exciting," you write "Electricity."

In dealing with the concept of music as medication, have you found that music can help bring healing to listeners?

I think all music does, not in a literal way but in a primal way. I think good music floors you. It's physical. I think most people have had a time in their life when they've heard that. They've felt it down the back of their spine or in their belly or felt it in their head or the back of their neck -- that's what the best music is about. It reaches out to people that way.

(Copyright 2010 by Jeffrey Charles Stratton. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.)