The New Cue #429 October 21: Paul Banks of Interpol
The New Cue #429 October 21: Paul Banks of Interpol
"I’m about as interested in somebody super famous as am I interested in someone else I don’t know."
Good morning,
You join us today for a chat with Interpol frontman Paul Banks, who spoke to Niall – that’s me, hello – a week or so ago whilst he was out and about on the streets of Berlin, where he lives with his wife and their 18-month-old son, Sailor.
His little lad didn’t take long to get his road legs. “We opted to have a philosophy that the baby bends to the family rather than the family bends to the baby,” says Paul. “You go into it with the best intentions, but it turned out to be harder than that. But he’s been flying around the world with us since he was three months old.”
Where next for Banks Jr, then? Well, he’ll be joining dad and band as they make their way across Europe as part of the tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their majestic second record Antics, which lands on UK shores at the start of November. Here’s a cracking live performance from the era to get you in the mood:
Paul says he’s well prepped for what’s coming. “We’ve done a couple of these shows already so I know the drill,” he says. “I like doing them. There’s interesting nostalgia components, because you just don’t feel that much time has passed but I recognise there’s a whole new generation of people experiencing that record for the first time.”
Alongside readying a trip back to 2004, he’s also been plotting for the future too. There’s the trio of “rock dads” (“but only two of us are dads) that he’s formed in Berlin to work on his solo material, whilst Interpol have also begun working on the follow-up to 2022’s The Other Side Of Make-Believe. “It doesn’t really represent when the record might come out,” he says, “but we’ve got eight or nine songs kicking around.”
His immediate focus, though, is on The New Cue’s Life & Times questionnaire, so settle in and enjoy. This is a free edition, but if you’d like to support our hard-earned content, then feel free to click Subscribe Now below and become a paying subscriber. We’d appreciate it. If you enjoy, then tap that little share button and spread the word…
See you on Wednesday,
Ted and Niall
The Life & Times Of… Paul Banks
What was the first record you loved?
Thriller. I feel like I received it on a cassette tape when I was five or six.
What was the last record you loved?
ScHoolboy Q’s latest, Blue Lips.
What’s your earliest memory?
I think I remember actually being in the immigration office of the United States when we moved there when I was three. I definitely have some other memories of the first place I stayed in in Michigan, which is where we moved, like a rental house for a few weeks before we moved into our house. I remember a Christmas there, as a wee young lad playing with a little green army man on a wood floor in a dark room. My accent at that point was full Brit, bruh.
What’s your daily domestic routine?
Sometimes I take the wee lad to daycare, sometimes not. Then I have a studio that I go and work in a lot here. I have a boxing coach, so go from the studio to the gym. Pick the baby up from daycare, take him to the playground, grocery shop, then I cook dinner most days, put the baby to bed and then do some more work.
Who or what is the love of your life?
I’ll say my wife.
What’s your worst habit?
I think it’s a variation on procrastination. We can just say procrastination. I’m aware of it, but not enough to do something about it, which is another element of the procrastination.
When were you most creatively satisfied?
Recently, I’ve had a good amount of creative satisfaction. And I would say when I made my mixtape, Everybody On My Dick Like They Supposed To Be, it was very creatively satisfying because it was just me and the machine, no mixer, no producer - not that there shouldn’t have been, maybe it would have been much better there were. But it was as close of a snapshot of what was going on in my brain and how I was using the equipment, the naïve way I was using the equipment. It’s a very pure snapshot of that moment in time for me.
Everybody On My Dick Like They Supposed To Be.
Has anyone you’ve ever met made you feel starstruck?
Not really. I’m about as interested in somebody super famous as am I interested in someone else I don’t know. I think maybe when you’re starstruck, it’s either because you’re so in awe or because there’s some kind of component of expectation and to me, I’ve seen enough famous people to be like, ‘Yeah, that’s a famous person who I’m never going to see again, not have lunch with’, so who cares?
Who or what is the greatest influence on your work?
My subconscious. That’s either a really good answer or a huge dodge. What’s my subconscious like? It’s more primal, it’s more instinctive. It’s simultaneously more calm but also more dynamic. And I also see more rage, but it’s not rage, it’s more kinetic energy and more calm exists there and I think more essential emotion. I feel like it’s also beneath or beyond language, which I think it means it’s this force that you can catch some sparks off that you then put words around. It’s like this pool of inspiration and reaction and reactivity and tension and angst and longing from the first days of life to the present. What I like is it’s not formulating narrative stories, it’s not saying ‘You should talk about the time that this happened’, it’s much more raw than that.
What do you wish the 18-year-old you knew?
I think to have a more internalised sense that nobody owes you anything except for your parents. I would like to have been more Zen in the face of people not doing what I wanted them to do, or behaving the way I would like them to behave, or viewing my work the way I wanted them to view it, or celebrating me the way I wanted to be celebrated. I think all of those things, the humility of recognising that those things upset you because you feel some degree of entitlement, or you’ve got some misplaced sense that it was owed to you from other people to behave a certain way, knowing that people don’t really owe you anything other than civility is a humbling way to approach the world. It doesn’t mean not to have then been disappointed when things don’t work out, but to really not be so negatively impacted by frustrations and resentments.
What would people be surprised to learn about you?
That I get weirdly excited by super good kitchenware. If you get me a really high-end knife - and I’ve got KitchenAid knife sharpener from my mum for Christmas - ooh, when that shit’s razor sharp and I’m just dicing veggies like a fucking Samurai, I’m really in my happy place. And then throw that in some All-Clad fancy cookware, that’s more than an average amount of fulfilling for me.
What one book would you recommend our readers read?
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
What was the home you grew up in like?
Very nice, suburban Michigan with real depth of seasonal changes from a metre of snow to nice warm, sunny summers in a nice house with a yard and lots nature around and a dog or two, an older sibling. I was very fortunate and had a pretty traditional family and a happy upbringing.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Sometimes I feel like I wish I’d been given more advice. My father often says, ‘Don’t make any important decisions when you’re tired or jet-lagged’.
Do you mind getting older?
No, I think maybe there’s certain moments of transition which are difficult, where you realise you’re going from one phase to the next and there’s that moment of ‘Oh, I’m no longer this group’ or, ‘I no longer look that way’, and then I think we settle into every new phase and then it’s making the best of the new phase and recognising all the benefits of it. At least you get the cumulative improvement of your overall wisdom and experience, and so I think that’s always tipping the scale towards the positive as you get older.
What’s the secret to a happy relationship?
It might sound a little dry, but the term that would come to mind is basically fair play. I think that encompasses a lot of things like not to take advantage of someone else’s kindness, and also not to be with someone who you feel is not respectful of you and your time and your emotions. It really boils down to an innate sense of whether or not your needs and emotions feel protected and thus you must also give a shit about protecting the other person’s needs and emotions. Especially if you’re a proud person, if you feel like someone is not treating you well, it’s very hard to treat them well. So I think fair play. But then also, try to give more than you get.
Interpol’s Slow Hands.
What’s your favourite film and why?
Performance by Nicolas Roeg, because it encompasses so many elements of cinema and fiction and fashion and culture that I love. I still quote it regularly. “It’s obsolete!”, “Business is business and progress is progress”: I just said that to myself yesterday. I love that fucking movie:
Do you have a favourite soundtrack?
I think I’ll have to give it to Mandy:
What talent would you most like to have?
Other than being able to broker world peace, I think it would be to dunk a basketball.
What’s your biggest pet peeve?
This is kind of a Russian doll answer, because it’s rudeness as demonstrated by people with umbrellas. I just find that the amount of people trying to poke your eye out on a rainy day is disheartening about the state of humanity.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Trying to not get too emo, but it’s Sailor. Cracking him up and making him laugh is so many light years ahead of any other one.