Glastonbury Festival - JazzWorld Stage

Morcheeba Looking Forward to Festival Appearance

Morcheeba are now, by their own admission, festival regulars but you can never have too much of a good thing. With the grounding that comes with motherhood, and with the group's appearance headlining the Oneworld stage, Morcheeba’s lead vocalist Skye wanted to tell us her thoughts about this year’s Glastonbury experience...

Glastonbury 2003 is nearly upon us, but how would you actually sum up the whole Glastonbury Festival experience to someone who’s never been before?

Ooh, God! That's hard! I think the best way would be to say it's a small city crammed into a field! With lots of people!

You’re on tour at the moment and you’re down as one of the headline acts for the Oneworld stage, what are you looking forward to most?

I’m just really looking forward to playing! Unfortunately because we’re coming straight down to the festival on the day that we perform, we’re just going straight on stage and then off on the road again, so we won’t really have much of a chance to look around. Last time when we came we had a bit of time and we were able to camp and stay over for the night; but I am looking forward this time to seeing what the festival is like this year with the extra ticket numbers and with the fence situation all sorted out - to see if it actually is going to be less crowded.

Morcheeba always seem to be on the road; is having and maintaining the strong live presence that you’ve developed with your sound one of the most important things to you as a group?

I think its part of it for Morcheeba really. Being in the studio and getting the sound right would go hand in hand with the live performances really. I guess because in the UK we don’t get played on the radio an awful lot then when we do actually get the opportunities to perform, ensuring that we have this stage presence and a good live sound really does become one of the most important things. It's important that we play live as much as possible so that people can actually get to hear us!

You’ve been in Morcheeba for quite a few years now, and a lot of respect and credibility has come with that. What are your own personal ways of dealing with the hype that surrounds everything?

I guess being a mother of two continuously keeps me pretty grounded and maintains a lot of my touch with reality. I tend not to read the music press that’s written about us though.

What would you say are the main priorities for Morcheeba at the moment then?

Well, we’re in the middle of a major tour right now and we’re promoting the compilation CD we’re releasing. We started just outside of Prague and we’re on our way to Hamburg and Berlin.... its 20 dates in all, including playing at Glastonbury, and we finish on the 27th August in Paris - so its pretty gruelling.

What ambitions are actually left for you to fulfil then?
There are so many places that i’ve still yet to go.

(Giggles). I’d like to go and play a gig out in Jamaica, that would be good, and perhaps in a few other more exotic type countries.

Has any particular country, other than the UK, ever held or brought any big surprises for you when visiting, perhaps in terms of your music and how its been received?

Well, we recently played over in China, and we were out there for three weeks, with our first shows in a place where we played to 8,000 students for two nights in a row. That was quite a surprise as the majority of them had never heard of Morcheeba before, but by the end of it they were all up and dancing and i think that in that respect we won a whole load of new fans there. That was quite a pleasant surprise as i thought they might have just been sitting down and staring at us, perhaps not knowing quite what to expect. So that was good.

Do you have any unusual or funny Glastonbury stories or anecdotes that you can share with us?

Let me think... there’s no major stories that do spring to mind actually; probably because most of the things you see there are just all so extraordinary anyway. - Its always quite funny being backstage; i do remember one particular year, when it was just really, really muddy, there was this girl there who worked for a record company: She had on these designer wellie-boots, and in her hand she had a load of wet wipes, and all the time she was just constantly trying to wipe her boots and keep them clean!! I felt so sorry for her.

With so much touring for you, have you seen any acts while on the road that have really caught your eye?

Actually, we were in Canada recently, to play a few gigs out there, and we were sitting in this cafe and this girl came up to us, and after a while chatting, she’d recognised that were were in the band and invited us down to the gig that she was opening for David Gray. So we went down and i just thought that her music was really lovely - she had a really beautiful voice. Her name was Bic Runga; i’ve just bought her new cd now actually and i think she’s going to be playing in London somewhere soon, so that could be worth checking out. If something happened and the band had to replace me with anyone, they could replace me with Bic Runga, because she had some great melodies. I’d be happy with that.

Finally, what can Glastonbury goers, the television and online viewers expect from your festival set?

Well, hopefully everyone will be dancing and jumping around to our songs in the Glastonbury spirit anyway, but we’ll be playing songs from all four of our albums and we might throw in a new one while we’re there and maybe do a bit of a cover song; something perhaps by Neil Young. We’ll decide closer to the time, or maybe even while we’re there. Stranger things have been known to happen!

Interview by Glynn Pegler

For the full version of this interview, please visit: www.culturemagazine.net
Morcheeba's greatest hits compilation CD 'Parts Of The Process' and DVD 'From Brixton To Beijing' are both relased on June 30th.

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