Kaiser Chiefs Rewind The Glory Days Of ‘Employment’

UK indie icons Kaiser Chiefs are returning to Australia this November, celebrating the twentieth Anniversary of their seminal record, Employment, one of the best-selling UK debut albums of all time. It will be their first visit to these shores since 2012, when they packed out venues across the country, they also played an exhilarating set at Splendour in the Grass along with sideshows in 2011. The band is currently weaving their way across the UK and Europe playing an extensive schedule of outdoor celebration shows. Bass player Simon Rix talks to Hi Fi Way about the anniversary and upcoming tour.

Twenty years of Employment, when you reflect on that milestone how does that sit with yourself?
It feels weird saying that. Obviously, we’re doing a lot of gigs now and the songs still feel pretty fresh and like we play to write quite a lot. I feel like those songs got a lease of life because of football in the UK and that still feels pretty current in a way. But then, when I think about me standing and recording the bassline or whatever for Oh My God, it feels like about a hundred million years ago. It feels like a different lifetime. That’s strange.

Is it hard not to get sort of swept up in the nostalgia of it all?
Yeah, but it’s like our nostalgia. So it was really interesting. When we first rehearsed, we’re doing the album in full, we rehearsed for that, and I expected it to be quite hard and take a lot of rehearsals. But actually, we did the first rehearsal and I sort of knew it all. It was weird because it felt like me doing what I do naturally, if that makes sense, when I don’t think about it and revisiting my musical headspace somehow at the time. I don’t know. It was a weird feeling of like, “Oh right, yeah, I used to do this, and I used to do that.” And if I was playing this, then naturally I would do this thing. It was nice to have that feeling again. So yeah, I’ve enjoyed playing the songs. I said earlier on, I feel like I’ve learned something a little bit about Kaiser Chiefs which I had forgotten.

How was the whole process of going back through old photos, B-sides, demos, and live recordings for pulling together Employment 20, which looks like an awesome keepsake for the fans?
Yeah, it was good fun. I had a bit of a good idea about what I wanted to do before we started. The first thing was I put a song called Take My Temperature, which should have been on the album in the first place, onto the main album. It was a B-side, but we played it at every single gig in that era, and it felt like it really should have been on the album. It was played as much as an album track. So we moved it on and then had all the B-sides together, because there’s some really good B-sides that we were really proud of.

Some of them are a bit silly, some of them I was just trying stuff out, but we enjoyed them. I think there was a point where we got really, really busy, and they weren’t quite as high quality, but there were a lot of songs that informed the album songs. So they’re important songs to us, and some songs that we really love, like Think About You And I Like You is a really good song. Less Is More is the first song we ever played as a band live. So stuff like that has really good memories. I wanted to get all that stuff together.

Then some covers and remixes and bits and pieces, like Heard It Through the Grapevine, covered for War Child, we used to play that loads at gigs, so we gave that a spot and then finally, the CD version, it was someone else’s idea to have loads of live tracks and session tracks and stuff. But it was great to listen back to stuff I’d forgotten about. Stuff with presenters I’d forgotten about. All of that was good memories. But more when listening to live stuff, it took me ages because what I realised is we’re a lot better as a band now. So listening to a lot of old tapes, I realised that in 2005 we were running on vibe. There was a lot of vibe going on. I think we were quite tired and less experienced, and just going around the world, probably didn’t have quite as good gear. We had some fairly dodgy versions of some of the songs. So it took me a while, but I tried to find good versions of every song. In fact, one of the best places was Australia. We did a Triple J live thing that was really, really good. But I don’t know if we could use it all because of rights holders and stuff.

Was there anything else that you discovered going through those archives that you’d forgotten?
Yeah, I guess it comes from being a bit older. But I regularly see stuff or listen to stuff and I’m like, “I don’t remember this.” Don’t remember this thing at all, or don’t remember going to that. Someone will show you something and you’ll be like, “No, no, we did this, then this, then this.” And then someone will show you a photo and you’re like, “Oh, okay.” So yeah, it’s good to remember what we did and how busy we were. Look at the schedule of how many places we went and where. I’m weirdly proud of us in a way, that we managed to do it all without falling out or the band collapsing.

Any other highlights when you look back, anything that really stands out from when Employment came out?
The best things that happened around then? Hmm! Employment came out, and then we were just really busy. Going to America a lot, going to Europe a lot and then when we came to do the summer festivals, so Glastonbury, one in Scotland that used to be called T in the Park, one in Ireland, Oxygen, and a couple of others, we came back to England and everyone knew all the songs. The crowds were massive. People were singing not just the words but the riffs at gigs and we were like, “Oh wow!” That was the first moment we felt like it was helping, like it was being successful. That’s what we’d wanted, but we hadn’t really computed that it might happen. So that was really good.

Then after the summer, we started doing some pretty big gigs. I remember Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, Earl’s Court in London, doing these really big gigs. That’s what we’d always wanted. We’d done fifty capacity gigs and one hundred capacity gigs, and suddenly we were playing to twenty thousand people just for Kaisers. Totally mad. Then the final thing we did that year was come to Australia. We played with Foo Fighters in a few places, and then we did a festival near Perth. I remember we did some other smaller stuff. That was the perfect end to that year. Nice touring, supported a big band, played some great places, nice hotels. We were in Australia, so the food’s nice and everyone’s relaxed and nice, all the stereotypical stuff. We went to Perth and we were hanging out with Oasis. That was the perfect end of the year, like a reward for a very busy, busy year. All of those things were good.

Did anything really prepare you for how much life changed from that point? I remember how big that album was at the time, it was epic.
I guess that’s my point, really. We’ve been in the band for a long, long time, and in terms of the number of people we were playing to and the number of records we were selling, it was night and day. But in terms of the band, because we were still touring around so much, it wasn’t like we were just doing big gigs. We’d do Earl’s Court and it’d be twenty thousand people, but then we’d go back to America and play in Montana to two hundred people. So we never really had that thing, it was very gradual. We never had a “you’ve made it” moment. Maybe when we got the BRITs, I guess that was a big moment.

I think it was good for us that it wasn’t like, bang! You’re famous. Now you’re living it up, getting papped and all that stuff. It was just kind of gradual, album is doing well, doing this gig, doing a small gig, doing a big gig, doing a festival, going to Australia, doing this and that. I honestly don’t think I really reflected on how big Employment was until COVID. That was fifteen years later. I got given a big box during COVID which management or whoever must have been clearing out, a big box of DVDs, performances, award ceremonies, all sorts of stuff. I thought, I should really rip all these so they don’t get lost.

That was the start of looking through stuff and starting to collect things for the album as well. That was the first time I really reflected and thought, “Oh yeah, we did well.” We went from absolutely zero to selling two million records in the UK in like eighteen months. That was quite impressive.

I still remember going to Melbourne for that Foo Fighters gig and saw you play at Rod Laver Arena with them which was pretty cool.
Yeah, I think as well, it’s funny with Foo Fighters because they don’t seem like a band that’s that similar to us. Kaiser Chiefs feel like quite a different band. But especially in Australia, I think it worked in terms of a bill. We’re both bands that want to get the crowd going and have everyone have a good time. That really worked. I do remember, I’m pretty sure it was in Melbourne, there are two arenas next to each other, right? We played the gig with Foo Fighters, and then we went next door and watched Mötley Crüe play.

After that album was done and you did the tour cycle and all that, did you feel pressure to do something that would top Employment? Trying to avoid the second album blues?
Yeah, definitely. It’s a long time ago, so I can’t quite remember exactly, but I do think that in those early days, a lot of the pressure was from us. We were really committed. That’s one of the reasons why Employment was good and had big songs, because we were really pushing ourselves to do everything and write the best possible songs. When we’d been playing Employment, we had like fifty minutes of music. We were getting all these gigs and having to pad it out with a cover or a B-side or whatever. So I think we were desperate to get back to Leeds and write new songs so we had more for the set.

Fairly quickly, we wrote most of that second record. The interesting thing about it is, in our practice space in Leeds, we invited the record company up. We played what we thought was the album. Everyone was nice, we had a drink, and then they went back to London. Then they rang up management and said, “Oh yeah, they haven’t got a first single yet.” We were like, “That’s rubbish. Everything’s Average Nowadays, that’s the first single. Maybe Angry Mob’s the second single.” They were really insistent. The record company said, “You’ve got to write some more songs.” We were really annoyed and said, “Alright, okay, fine.”

Then, as a sort of “we’ll show them” moment, we wrote Ruby. It was like, “Look, this is a great song.” We were trying to prove ourselves right, but actually, we totally proved them right because obviously, that was the first single. Once we had Ruby, we knew. Internally, we also didn’t want to just be the Riot guys. You get labeled with stuff. We were like, “Let’s not be the Riot guys forever,” even though I don’t even mind that, to be fair, we’re still are those guys. But yeah, then we had Ruby, and we became the Ruby people after that.

Even when you look at when Employment came out, it’s quite an alumni, bands like Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Babyshambles, and probably a whole host of others. Must be pretty cool to be grouped in that sort of company?
Yeah, definitely. There’s quite a lot of looking back at the moment because it’s twenty years for a lot of people. It was a really special time. It’s interesting because, for me, even though it’s quite a small time period, maybe now we look back and things seem more closely aligned than they did then. But for me, there was this thing with The Strokes, mainly White Stripes, and then people like Jet, maybe The Datsuns that early 2000s garage rock scene we used to like.

When we started Kaiser Chiefs, it was kind of a reaction to that. We were going for being really, really British. Then this scene emerged where no one really sounded the same, but it was still a sort of scene, Franz, Bloc Party, us. The outliers were The Killers from America, and bands like Maxïmo Park, a load of bands! We were lucky to be in the right place at the right time with some good songs. Suddenly there was this big bunch of UK bands, all with good songs, all dominating the UK charts. That sort of spread to the world. I’m very grateful for those other bands as well as us. I think if there hadn’t been a scene, if it had just been one band, it would have been a lot tougher.

I don’t quite know why it all happened at that moment, but sometimes these things are a reaction. After us, you had Arctic Monkeys, maybe The Vaccines, a few more bands. By 2008, I guess it was done. Things had moved on to another scene. But for about four years, every week there was a new, really good band coming out of somewhere in the UK. It was very special. I kind of feel it won’t happen again.

If you had your time over, would you do anything different? Would you try to enjoy it more, knowing that the window some bands have with their first album can be short?
I’d continue touring the first album for longer and not worry so much about the second album. I’d try to enjoy it more, see more stuff, and be more grateful to the people who helped us out on the way up. I don’t think it was on purpose, but we were just on to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. No time for reflecting or being modest. A bit of that stuff. But most of what we did, I’m pretty proud of. I’d maybe advise myself against a couple of outfit choices and things like that. But yeah, on the whole, I think we did okay.

How’s it been revisiting some of these songs from Employment live, particularly the ones you don’t normally play all that often?
It’s been good. There are two things about playing the live stuff. One is, it’s great to play the old songs, I really enjoy it. But a Kaiser set normally is quite bang, bang, bang. The album is like that in the first half, but the second half is more album tracks and reflective moments. That’s a test for me, to not try and change it or up the tempo. It’s been really good to have everybody on board, enjoying listening to Caroline, Yes and Team Mate and stuff. Enjoying those songs because they haven’t heard them for a long time. It’s maybe a lesson for me, when writing a set or doing a gig, it doesn’t have to be fast and furious all the time. You can have other moods, and people do jump on board with it.

Have you been playing it in order like on the album, or mixing it up for the live show?
My thing is, if we’re playing a festival, we mix it up. If we’re playing our own show, we play the album in full. Maybe I need to do a poll of Australians to see what they want to hear. But I think if you’re doing an album show, it’s a bit of a cop-out to not play it in order. We put it in that order for a reason. People used to listen to it in that order and know the changes and all that stuff. When you finish playing the album in full, it feels like an achievement, weirdly, even though it’s just thirteen songs, and we’d always play twenty songs in a set. It feels like you’ve done something, been on a bit of a journey. It’s a nice, rewarding experience.

Are there any songs you were more apprehensive about, even though you’ve been playing them now, ones that were harder to relearn or work out how to play live?
It was actually much easier than I thought. One of my lessons from doing the Employment stuff is about simplicity. When we first started, I had one bass, probably no pedals. Whitey had a couple of pedals, Peanut had a couple of keyboards. Everything was pretty simple. The sounds were simple and easy to reproduce. Some of the songs had a riff, one vocal idea, a breakdown, and the end, and that was it. And it was a good song. If we did that now, we’d feel like it wasn’t enough. It needs more changes, more layers of keyboards, more vocal ideas. But it’s made me feel that simplicity can be the best thing to do.

Returning to Australia, that’s not far away now. You must be looking forward to getting back?
Yeah, definitely. I don’t know why, we used to come to Australia regularly. In 2012, we came and headlined a festival, I think, Groovin’ in the Moo, I don’t know if that exists anymore. We were playing with Public Enemy, I like this story, we were flying, and they were flying as well on the same plane. One time I was just sat on the plane and Flavor Flav was sat next to me. He was asleep, had his alarm clock thing on him. I always thought that was a weird juxtaposition, like, has he set his alarm? Anyway, I don’t know why we didn’t come back. We always had a great time, and the audiences were always really, really good. For some reason, we haven’t been back, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing some friends I’ve got in Australia, seeing all the people, and having a nice time in summer in Australia.

Is it just too hard to fit in Adelaide this time, or is that just the way the tour cycle goes?
I think it’s just the offer we got. My friend who lives in Perth says a lot of people miss out Perth, but Perth is definitely on our list. For some reason, I don’t know why Adelaide didn’t get there this time, but there’s a reason to come back, right?

Absolutely! Damn straight! Beyond the twentieth anniversary tour, what’s next for Kaiser Chiefs? Plans for a new album or more touring?
Yeah, we always talk, so it’s good. I’m sure there’ll be some more gigs. I feel this year, there have been a couple of tricky years post-COVID, post-Brexit, a lot going on inside and outside the band. I feel like this year, with Employment, there’s not been the pressure of making a record, promoting a record, doing whatever. It’s actually been really good for us to just enjoy playing music, enjoy hanging out, doing gigs without any outside pressure. I think it’s been good for the band. I think it’ll help with the longevity as well. But yeah, at some point, we need to think about another record. It’ll be our ninth record, that’s a lot of records!

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch The Kaiser Chiefs on the following dates, tickets from Secret Sounds…