Another reason to feel they’ve got something to prove is the loss of their drummer and founding member, Nick Hodgson. For most bands that wouldn’t be such a big deal: find a new drummer, put out a press release, make a Spinal Tap joke and move on. But Hodgson wasn’t just their drummer, he was their principal songwriter – the one who often came up with the ideas before passing them on to frontman Ricky Wilson and the rest of the band to finish off.
“He was actually the person who was the linking between all the components of the band, you know? He left, so that was an important thing,” Rix says with understatement. “But I think now in hindsight it was a great shake-up. Something really big happened and it was like, ‘Wow, OK, what’re we gonna do?’ It was an opportunity I think for us to start again, like a clean slate, to do something different and push things in a different direction. I think also with the jeopardy that was caused by Nick leaving, it re-ignited our hunger.”
That new start has resulted in their fifth album, Education, Education, Education & War. War is an apt description – several of these songs sound like battle cries, calls to arms. “We’re at our best when we’re a little bit angry,” says Rix, “and we’re also saying something about society and life, modern life, that’s when we are at our best – when we’ve got something to get off our chests.”
After Hodgson announced his departure there were several awkward months where they still had shows to play before they could get on with this new beginning. “I think it’s easy if you fire someone, but because he went very amicably there’s lots of contracts and various things that had to be sorted out. We were just waiting around really because the four of us wanted to get on with getting on but we had a little bit of waiting around to do, so that was frustrating and a couple of us did some other things in the meantime.”
Those other things include Ricky Wilson’s surprising move of signing on as a judge on the UK version of The Voice, where he sits alongside Kylie Minogue, Tom Jones, and will.i.am. Not everyone was sure that was a great idea, but Wilson convinced them, explaining it would get them back in the attention of the mainstream audience they’ve always wanted.
Right from the start the Kaiser Chiefs have been a pop band with their eyes on the charts, one who would perhaps have been more at home in the ‘90s where they could have tussled with Oasis and Blur for a space on the front of the NME. Instead, they’ve lacked competition, going straight to the Mercury Prize shortlist with their first album.
“When you’ve done it and you’ve had hit records and played lots of gigs and been given lots of awards, lots of praise, maybe you lose that hunger a little bit. I’m sure I didn’t mean to, but I think we all did a little bit. I think we regained it, suddenly we had something to prove again – that we could do it without Nick.
“And also I think because it’s our fifth album, we’ve done it for 10 years, a lot of bands fall by the wayside and I think we suddenly realised we had to step up and we had to prove that we still were the best band around.”
BY JODY MACGREGOR
