THE ZUTONS
TEXT TANIA BISWAS
DATE AUGUST 10

U.K. guitar rock may have found itself postage-stamp ambassadors in the likes of Franz Ferdinand, but the Liverpool-based Zutons are sneaking around the trenches with the most soulful rock this side of the Average White Band and Rare Earth. Delta blues, punk, blue-eyed soul, ska, funk, and exotica rush the stage all at once on Who Killed… The Zutons? (Deltasonic/Epic), a madcap ramble through the last half-century of music, produced by ex-Lightning Seed Ian Broudie. Sure, anthems like “You Will You Won’t” hearken back to Sly and the Family Stone, whereas the frontier balladry toward the end of the record gives a nod or three to Hank Williams. But the stomping mishmash is unmistakably a brainchild of Zutopia.
What started with guitarist Boyan Chowdhury, bassist Russell “Rusty” Pritchard, and drummer Sean Payne meeting at school and eventually joining up with frontman Dave McCabe, ultimately came together with the addition of saxophonist Abi Harding. Often introduced live as “the fit bird on the saxophone,” Harding was originally brought in on the occasional track, and finally
was made a permanent member. Much like the collage dynamic of the album, the band members, themselves, are a collection of characters that work together unexpectedly well, a fact that makes The Zutons’ live show good enough to upstage their tour mates, as with the recent Thrills show in New York.
Facts like this also contributed to the widespread outbreak of Zuton hysteria in the UK earlier this year, which was nearly derailed when sticks man Payne had a flight case dropped on one of his mitts, breaking enough fingers to put him temporarily out of commission. Despite this incident, the band was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, and the week leading up to the award saw major UK news sources, with all the fervor of bookies at a horserace, keenly touting the Zutons as the ones to watch. They may not have taken home the prize, but they’re definitely still the underdog to put your bets on.
Sitting down with Liverpool’s finest twice over a month’s span, thanks to an equipment malfunction, ‘Sup got an earful about tour buses, fear, willies and, yes, space aliens.
So what is it like to be a Zuton?
Russell: You fly around, lose hours everywhere, smoke well too much, and just stink and go around in planes all the time. Then when you get off a plane, you gotta drive for another twenty hours and then lose a day.
Dave: You don’t have time to get a wash in the morning and you drink a little too much ’cause you’re not at home .
Russell: And ’cause it passes time. I don’t even like drinking too much, but from the first few times we were on tour buses in England, I used to deliberately wait a while, get wasted, and then get into a really good sleep ’cause the thing about tour buses is you wake up on them, like a little bump might wake you up and it’s really frustrating. And after about two hours, you need the toilet ’cause you’re just getting shaken and all the juices are just going down, so you’re at the toilet every couple of hours as well like. And there’s only one toilet and it stinks -
Abi: And you can only wee!
Was there ever a machine or instrument that you wanted to get inside of and take apart and put back together? Did you ever actually try to do it?
Dave: I used to go in the backyard and smash cardboard boxes up. My ma used to go mad, but that’s all I’ve ever wanted to take apart. Sometimes, I think, when you take things apart, it’s weird. When you put them back together, it’s not the same, you know, but you feel complete. So I’d like to take anything apart, like a television or a gun, and put it back together.
Russell: An engine would be a classic ’cause you could take an engine apart and put it back together and spend hours doing’ it, and you’d be well satisfied when you were done with it.
Dave: I’d like to take Boyan’s Starcaster apart and leave it there.
Abi: (Laughs)
Would you actually be willing to use a gun that you took apart and put back together?
Dave: Yeah! (Brief pause) No, I wouldn’t. No.
Who or what was your primary source of musical knowledge when you were growing up? Who played you the records you can’t live without today, or where did you first hear them?
Dave: Kurt Cobain and Axl Rose were big for me. But me mates really. My mum and dad never did. They were into the Talking Heads, though, when I was younger, and my brother had Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, stuff like that.
Russell: My mum and dad’s record collection, I reckon. I used to love going through it and you’d find all these bad records and you’d be with your mates going ‘Ah, listen!’ I remember finding this record by this band called Radiator and it was absolutely disgusting’ ’80s rock.
What’s it like having a/being the girl in the Zutons?
Russell: I think the best thing about it is that it takes away from being four lads or five lads together. It stops you from going a bit too mad sometimes ’cause you go ‘Ah, I can’t do that ’cause that’s a bit too mad for a girl’s eyes!’
Abi: You do what you want, like!
Dave: It doesn’t stop me, to be honest. I think Abi knows that.
Russell: I just mean that, if a girl weren’t around so much, it would just be a porn fest on the bus.
Dave: It’s like that anyway!
Russell: No, it gets close and then it stops.
Abi: I just feel like another one of the lads. I never really notice if they try and stop themselves from being rude. It’s better than being in a band with four other girls because then it would just be bitchy.
Russell: And you’re saying it’s not in this band?
Abi: No, ’cause when lads have an argument, you’re mates ten minutes later. But the bad things are that it’s hard to speak sometimes, you can’t get a word in. It’s like when people have selective hearing. It’s also loud and it stinks. I got a bad willy smell the other day (laughs).
Dave: Aw, man, I don’t even know what willies smell like. I don’t wanna know, I’m a man! Okay, please, no more. Next question. This is going to wreck us! Abi is our big image selling point in the band. We don’t want her talking like that.
Abi: Yeah, okay, it’s great.
Russell: We just stink of willies!
What are your Top Five desert island discs?
Russell: Mine would be The Best Party Hits Ever. You need that. There’d be no downside to life then ’cause you’ve got your Best Party Hits Ever. And there’d be a bird that would come outta the sea like in James Bond to party with you. Big time!
Dave: On a serious note, I’d take Captain Beefheart, Clear Spot, Nirvana, In Utero. I’d take Kraftwerk, whichever one because it would go on for ages and you could just sit there and listen.
Russell: Dark Side of the Moon (general agreement), maybe Sgt. Pepper’s, Pet Sounds, Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys -
Abi: I’d take Hello Nasty and Paul’s Boutique by the Beasties; it’d be good letting loose one.
Russell: I’d take James Brown, Sex Machine.
Dave: I’d take a Simon & Garfunkel record, Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Abi: I’d take a jazz CD too. I’d take Time Out, Dave Brubeck Quartet.
Boyan: I wouldn’t take anything because, on a desert island, there would be no electricity! Albums would be a waste of space in my luggage!
All: Ooooh! (Laughing)
So if you could take any one thing with you, what would it be?
Dave: He’d take a thong and his leather!
Russell: And his purple boxies!
What scares you the most?
Russell: Death, the ultimate thing to be scared of!
Abi: I’m not quite scared of death, actually.
Dave: Being the most hated person in the world ever for a mistake that you made. I’ve kinda been there in a social circle, but not on a world level. I also fear being on a plane forever and having to eat the meals they give you. That’s a big fear of mine, and it couldn’t happen ’cause you know it wouldn’t be forever and it’d have to sink at some point.
Abi: I’m scared of falling flat on my face on stage ’cause my saxophone would be there and we’d both get injured.
Dave: Boyan fears failure, just to get the word failure in there.
Do you always answer for him?
Dave: He’s not going to say nothing. See what I mean? He’s just havin’ a laugh (mock American accent). That guy feels nuthin’, man.
Boyan: I channel everything through these guys; they just talk for me.
Abi: Boyan’s biggest fear is stylists!
Why do you fear stylists?
Dave: ‘Cause he thinks he’s one himself.
Boyan: Well, he’s answered for me like he always does.
Abi: Shut up, just answer the question!
Boyan: (Under his breath) Dunno.
Dave: When you write the answer to that, just write D-U-double N-O, ‘dunno.’
If a Zuton were an alien, what would it look like? Would it be good or evil? What would be its weakness?
Dave: It would have a big willy!
Russell: And big tits!
Dave: It would look like one of them bad shirts, like a greeny-turquoise bad shirt.
Russell: It would be two-tone! And it would be both good and evil. Its weakness would be men and women, but it would go and be affected by its weakness and try and get over it but it would never succeed.
Dave: Or it would be from Mars. It’d be like Benny off Total Recall, the one that goes (mock accent) “I got five kids to feed!” It would just look like a black taxi driver and his weakness would be the fact that he works for Cohaagen; and he’s really a bad guy, but on the outside he appears to be a good guy.
So the planet Zuton would be filled with guys that look like Benny?
Dave: Yeah, it’d be the core of evil!