INTERVIEW: Franz Ferdinand @ Edinburgh Hogmanay 2019

Fifteen years ago, Franz Ferdinand were scheduled to play Edinburgh’s Hogmanay Concert in the Gardens. In classic Scottish fashion, the concert was rained off. The band took to Marchmont instead, performing to – let’s call it – 75 people instead of 75,000. Now they’re back, looking to finally perform that gig that got away. I sat down with Hogmanay headliners Franz Ferdinand’s Julien Corrie to discuss New Year in Edinburgh, touring the world, and bad weather.

Julien, stage name Miaoux Miaoux, has since joined the band and hoped that he’ll be the good weather omen that they were missing. He wasn’t wrong: their second attempt went without fault, performing to the crowds under Edinburgh castle’s midnight fireworks with not a raindrop in sight. Involved in the music scene for sometime as Miaoux Miaoux and signed to Chemikal Underground Records, Julien was gaining a name for himself in the Scottish music scene when he received an out of the blue call from Alex Kapranos asking to play together. “Since then, it’s just been working.”

How was 2018 for you?

It’s been great, yeah. It’s been so busy, we’ve really covered the majority of the globe. I’ve never done anything on this scale so it’s amazing. I love getting to travel, I love getting to see reactions of audiences all over the world. It’s been nice to see that the band’s got such a committed fan-base in lots of different countries.

It’s been a pretty solid year of being on the road then. Does that suit you, do you think?

Yeah it’s weird, there’s a certain disposition that you have to have. Some people suit tour and some people don’t, ‘cause it’s quite a major thing to do. I love it, I really love it. I really enjoy being away, the band’s like a little gang, we all get on. You have to get on really because you’re spending so much time together. But we’ve all got similar ideas and similar sense of humour.

So Always Ascending, what was the inspiration there?

We wanted to make a record that had overt dance references. Franz has always pulled influences from dance music, I mean ‘music for girls to dance to’ was always the band’s tagline. But we’ve never done a record that was so directly aimed towards the dancefloor before; we wanted to use more synthesisers, more disco, more funky stuff. It pulled together a lot of influences from a lot of places, but yet I still think that Franz Ferdinand DNA is there. It’s like a band playing live music, there’s no click track. We spent a lot of time rehearsing and then just went into studio for six days and busted it out. We recorded it really fast because we wanted it to feel like lightning in a bottle.

Fifteen years ago, the band was rained off. Maybe you’re the good weather omen that they didn’t have! Do you see a silver lining in that gig not working out and playing the Marchmont student flat instead?

Haha, hopefully – maybe I was what was missing! Yeah, well it’s a great story. I guess the fact that we’re now doing our first Hogmanay show in Edinburgh at what I would say is our peak. The band’s sounding fantastic and we’ve had these twenty months on the road to really get together and play the songs. I think it’s going to be brilliant. It’s a really good way to close out the tour and we’ve been looking forward to it for a long time.

Since the last date that Franz was scheduled to be playing here, obviously there’s been a huge shift in the industry with the shutting of high street record stores and the rise of online streaming. How do you think that’s affected you guys musically?

I think when you’re a musician and a creative you just have to keep your head down and do your best stuff. And not concern yourself too much, because a lot of what gets reported is doom and gloom because it’s one industry changing into another industry. It’s difficult because the pay for artists is much lower, but at the same time streaming is here to stay. It’s super convenient for the consumer, so as an artist you need to be aware of it but not worry about it too much. I sometimes catch myself thinking, ‘oh no, what are you doing?’, but you just have to remind yourself to go write bangers. Just concentrate on doing your best and just write good songs! That’s our ultimatum really, just write the best songs we can and play it for people around the world. And it seems to be working!

Over the last tour, have you had any specially eventful dates that have happened?

There’s been some particularly memorable shows, the show in Mexico was pretty amazing. It was just massive and the fans were really vocal. It’s somewhere that I’ve always wanted to go. I actually spent some time in South America as a kid when my family moved out to Peru. The people are really friendly and there’s something about that area of the world that I find really familiar, I just really like it. So that was good, Argentina was really good. The show we did in Shanghai was the first time the band had been to China and I didn’t really know what to expect and it was amazing. I mean, I didn’t know what to expect joining the band later on but it’s been fantastic to see the audience. There’s a really mixed age base, too, there’s really young teenage fans as well as older people, so it’s great.

Any more dates planned for 2019 or are you heading back to the Highlands?

I’m taking January off in the Highlands which will be really nice, then we’ll reconvene and do some more writing. We’ve had a bit of a chat about what we want to do next and we have some ideas. We’re really excited for 2019.

So it’s New Years… Do you have any traditions that you do every year?

Um, stay up until midnight? Or try to, haha! I’ve done a couple of Hogmanay gigs before with my own project, one in Aviemore which was really fun, so it’s always a good time of year. Hogmanay especially, because people in Scotland see it with a sense of community and as a chance to come together so there’s a really warm atmosphere. I think tonight’s going to be really special.

Have you learned anything this year that you’re hoping to bring into the new year?

I’m always fascinated by creativity because people who chose to work in the creative industries have this really strange way of working. It’s really free associative when you’re being creative and pulling bits from everywhere, but then you also have to be quite self disciplined because it’s all coming from you. Working in the music industry exists between the two: creativity, which is really free associative; but the world that we live in is really linear, you turn up at this time and do something at this time. I think I’m quite good at applying one to the other, but I think I’ll look to be more successful at applying to right mindset to creativity.

Last question, the obvious cliche.. Any new year’s resolutions?

Yeah, get fit! It’s been fun doing the tour, but there’s a bit in Take Me Out where we go to the front of the stage and jump around. Definitely towards the end of the tour I was like, ‘God I’ve got to go on stage and jump up and down’… I was getting quite tired! I’m not fit at all, so 2019: get fit.

I wished Julien good luck with the fitness and with the show. I’m not sure how the first one’s going, but the New Year’s performance went without issue, fans old and new relishing their debut Hogmanay show, even if it was fifteen years late.