Musictoday Interview with Mike Turner



Musictoday caught up with Mike Turner as he arrived at his hotel in New Orleans before a show. The band had just been forced to cancel a Gainesville, Florida, appearance due to Mike and Raine's ill health. After a day of sleep and fluids, the group was ready to hit the stage again.
Musictoday: Let's talk about the new album. It's a concept record, and I'm curious to know its genesis. It has a lot to do with Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. Were you the one who discovered the book?
Mike Turner: Yeah, I stumbled across it in a bookstore. I wish I could say there was some great intellectual motivation, but it has a shiny cover and that was really the only reason I picked it up in the first place.
Mtc: Has everyone in the band read it?
MT: I don't think everyone has actually made it all the way through it, because it is a rather weighty little tome. I think Raine managed to get through most of it, and the other guys have been sort of picking at it. We're very hesitant to call it a "concept record." I would say it's a "conceptually unified" record. It wasn't like we sat down, having read the book, and said, 'Man, we've got to write a record about this!' These were things we already had been talking about amongst ourselves, and Raine already had been writing about some of them on Happiness. So it was just more fuel for a fire that had already been burning.
Mtc: Did some of the songs exist before you read this and morph into being part of the album, or did they all spring from after you started working on it?
MT: Well, you'd have to ask Raine about whether they existed lyrically, but I think he was very, very inspired by the title section of the book, which suggested how technology was going to interact with our lives as time goes from this point on. Like I said, a lot of these were issues he had already been thinking about—[for example] if you look at "Is There Anybody Home?" on our last record. He was already wondering about technology and humanity's collision. I think the book sort of helped bring that more into focus. The only reason we ended up naming [the album] after [the book] is that we wanted to acknowledge the fact that we had been inspired by this book. Had it been more difficult to name it after it…when we brought it up, our manager, and obviously the legal arm at Sony, kind of went mental with the [idea].
Mtc: Why, cause they didn't want to be connected with the book?
MT: No, they didn't have a problem with that; they were worried that we'd get sued. Being lawyers, they see litigation at every turn. They were, like, 'Well, we'll get Sony intellectual corporate legal to talk to the people at Kurzweil licensing, and we'll broker an agreement.' And I was thinking, 'Man, by the time you guys broker something, I'll be fifty!' So I just went on one of Ray's sites and I e-mailed him.
Mtc: That's the way he became involved with it?
MT: Yeah, I thought for sure that ray@kurzweiltech.com was not going to actually go to Ray Kurzweil, right? Well, wrong, it actually does. He e-mailed back the next day and we've actually maintained a good dialogue. I got an e-mail from him just the day before yesterday. We've kept a good dialogue up. It just seemed like something organic and easy. He was into it and he did all the spoken word for it—after he said, 'Sure, name it after whatever you want,' he asked if there was anything else he can do. We had him do some voice over and it turned out he has an interesting voice, so…it just seemed very serendipitous that the opportunities presented themselves and very organic in the way it developed. It seemed not so pretentious and horrible, like the words "concept record" tend to bring to mind.
Mtc: I have to admit, I have not read the book, though I am curious after researching it and listening to the album. Is the melding of technology and humanity viewed as a negative or positive development? How do you view it?
MT: I personally view it very positively. And I think Kurzweil does, as well. Ray's got an optimistic streak that he is sometimes held to be apologetic for, which I think is the most ridiculous thing in the world. How can you be apologetic for being an optimist? There is certainly something to the fact that it's at least going to be schizophrenic; when you think about mechanization and, you know, cold hard analyses to assimilate through human abilities into a technical appliance, if there's any sort of mysticism involved—that the soul, or the spirit, or religion, or spirituality is something that exists outside of us as well as inside of us—then there is the fear that it could be lost. I don't necessarily believe that, but it is certainly something that Raine wrestles with. I guess a more important issue is that this is all something looking towards the future, this bright and wonderful future that could be there; but what about that your brother is having a crappy day today, your friend is depressed now. What about that? The future is wonderful, but what about right now and what we're dealing with and what we're living through right now? Rather than putting off your view of the world and your view of life for this goal, it's difficult to stay focused on right now.
Mtc: So it's a way to incorporate the future into your present day?
MT: Yeah, that seems to be the difficulty. All these wonderful things could happen, but they're not happening right now. So, you know, what relevance do they hold? Me, I think it holds great relevance, but I'm often called to task for the same fault of being too idealistic. I don't think I'm going to let go of that too soon.
Mtc: So it's not like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey?
MT: In the book, Ray doesn't really project it as the machines versus us. It's like, how many appliances do you use in your every day life in terms of technology? I guarantee you use an outside artificial intelligence for your research, through the Internet. I'm sure your cell phone has got all the options on it. Do you use a Palm Pilot?
Mtc: Not yet.
MT: Well, there are people who have their whole lives in those things. I think there is just going to be an increasingly seamless integration of technological appliances—and that's the only word I can really choose—that is going to be quite invisible. We are going to start to incorporate those physically. Like I had laser surgery and corrected my eyes. There are people getting cochlear implants who have never heard, who can [now] hear. Same with the visual cortex, with reverse engineering the human brain, we're just going to keep putting those things in place. And it will just be very seamless.
Mtc: If you start doing that, doesn't it expand everyone's life expectancy and cause problems for population in the long run?
MT: I'm sure it will. But Ray's projection on that is that the same technologies that enable the increase in human life will increase our ability to provide for everyone.
Mtc: So we'll find food and energy sources that enable us to handle this increase in man-machines.
MT: Yeah, there is almost a religious faith in technology at that point, which I have misgivings about. 'It'll be okay, we'll figure that out.' Well, are you sure? At who's expense? Or, is there an expense to be had? Ray even gets into some of the technologies that suggest the ability to provide food for everyone, from a nanotechnology standpoint, but I don't know. It's very hard to refute him, because he tends to have current day technology—like things that actually exist—and says, 'well, they're developing at this rate, we can expect them to continue developing at this rate, so, yeah, it's going to get there.'
Mtc: In a way, it seems like it becomes its own religion. In the same way that during the Dark Ages, religion was one of the only things keeping society advancing, through literacy.
MT: Very much so. I don't know if that faith is a whole lot different. If you have to believe in something, something you actually observe and can quantify, I don't think that it makes it any less special, unique, and spectacular, because it is something that we see. A hundred years ago, we thought that when a leaf fell into a stream, it turned into a fish, 'cause we didn't know where a fish came from. Spontaneous generation was what Pascal called it. We thought gravity was a mystery. Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic. So I don't think it's any less special if we actually know what it is. So I think faith is the unifying feature in all of it.
Concepts and technology aside, the true unifying theme of Spiritual Machines probably has more to do with the songwriting talents of Raine Maida and the rest of the band. As was true with the group's three previous full-lengths, a great deal of effort is put into making sure the songs hook listeners. While most cynics and indie rock elitists probably view this as a calculated attempt to score huge radio hits, it probably has more to do with the band's influences and tastes. This kind of pop bashing has been going on for a long time, when fans argued that the Beatles were a measly pop band, while the Stones were a ROCK band. Keep in mind, rock 'n' roll has always been pop music (in the "popular" sense) and many of the best acts in its history—from the Beatles and Stones to Van Halen and Rush to Pavement and Nirvana—have paid much attention to classic song structures, catchy melodies, and hooks. Where pop goes wrong is when it is artificially manufactured and shoved into the mouths of overly-styled acts.
Mtc: How important is a hook to a song?
MT: It keeps our attention.
Mtc: You get pegged as a pop band, because you write songs that get stuck in your head.
MT: Yeah.
Mtc: Do you set out to do that or does it come naturally?
MT: Those are our tastes. We're very lucky in that we're not really very different from our fans, so, you know, if we pursue the things we enjoy, then we can generally have a pretty high level of confidence that our fans are going to like it. We all like pop music and I don't have a problem with being called a pop band. I don't think we're necessarily pop in an especially N'Sync kind of way, or any of that currently being called pop. But in terms of classic song structure, classic song elements, I'm fine with being called a pop band. That's the music I love the most.
Mtc: You always seem to get pegged as the one liking punk music, like the Sex Pistols and the Jam.
MT: I mean, come on, the Jam—Paul Weller, what a great pop songwriter. You look at bands like 999 or Generation X, and the same thing applies. Short, tight, pop song structures, delivered with a maximum sort of vitriol and passion. No loose, baggy, rambling bulls**t.
Mtc: As with a "concept album" or art rock—I think a lot of people are placing Spiritual Machines in that vein…
MT: Yeah, it's not Ronnie James Dio, just back away from that. That's why I said we're not comfortable with the term "concept record." It was only when the record was done that we looked back and said, 'Hey, whaddya know, that damn book is here again.' As you probably gathered from my previous ranting, I'm pretty into that stuff and I'm not frightened of sharing it with anyone. Maybe you're not even listening, but as long as you're stationary, I'll talk to you about it.
Mtc: It seems like you guys have been influenced by literature from the get go.
MT: I guess. We're all somewhat mentally restless. And, in a band, it's real easy to—on the bus—go for the intellectual sedatives, rather than try to challenge yourself a bit. We've always opted for the latter.
Mtc: Do you prefer to be in the studio or on the road?
MT: Depends on when I'm at it. Right now, I'd rather be on the road. Towards the end of being on the road, I'll be glad to get back in the studio. There's a sort of natural ebb to it. You spend too much time in a studio and you start to go insane and want to just be a rock band again.
MT: And get back out with the fans again.
MT: Yeah, exactly. This tour has been so awesome for us, just doing the clubs and stuff. It just feels like we're really connecting again. Every time we start a new tour, it seems to revitalize us.
MT: It seems like your fans are quite rabid and connected. We got about 80 e-mails from your fans requesting that we review the record. It seems like that was an organized campaign and the sort of forward thinking that's going to help you guys in the end. Do you feel a strong connection with your fan groups?
MT: Oh, absolutely. On our second record, we started a little threaded newsgroup bulletin board called the Clumsy Congress. We watched it develop and I post on it and keep track of it. It really developed into its own community. They would talk about things other than the band, and we, maybe to the record company's chagrin, fully endorsed that behavior. Now, we spun it off into its own Web site, and now the site is probably more about the fans than the band. They do talk about the band, because that is their unifying interest. There's sections where they talk about Kurzweil, and I've read some of the most cogent, well-organized arguments about the issues presented in Kurzweil's thinking—I mean, you always end up face-to-face with philosophy when you deal with the man-machine and mortality; you end up in a philosophical diatribe—and I've read some of these incredible, well-organized arguments, only to find out they're from a 13-year-old kid. That's one thing I really love about the reaction and the interaction we have with our fans on the Internet: it's completely stripped of context. It's purely the value of the ideas. At that point, you can really trust the information you get, because you know it's not burdened with 'I'm trying to be cool, because I've got the cool clothes' or any of those things. There it is, in text, what you've got to say. That's something that I really value as a connection with the fans.
That connection between Our Lady Peace and its fans is sure to stay strong, especially if the band keeps writing the sort of high quality material it delivers on Spiritual Machines. Mike Turner and his band mates are going to need those rabid followers to defend them over the years, because they are operating in a time when "pop" is considered a dirty word (and coming from Canada—the land of Bryan Adams and April Wine—probably makes it even harder). None of that seems to bother these guys, however, as they seem quite comfortable with their position in the music world. You can bet on one thing, though: considering the number of times Mike, Raine, and the others have had to answer for their "conceptual" indulgences, their next record will probably steer far clear of unifying themes. Which will be just fine, as long as they continue writing good pop rock songs and maintaining their intelligence in the face of a dumbed-down and teched-up society.
by Lem Oppenheimer

Thanks to Katie Nye for sending me this article!

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