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Interview
7 October 2018 2.00 h

Andrew Staffell

Musician

Making music fun and accessible

Watch the interview at:
www.cataloniatoday.cat/a/1477468
We are a rock’n’roll band, so the references are quite clear: 50s and 60s music OUR LYRICS SIT BETWEEN SPY MOVIE THEMES AND MORE CONVENTIONAL LOVE SONG KIND OF NARRATIVES
Why did you choose to come to Barcelona?
I’m from Lon­don, and I came to Barcelona 10 ten years ago, I wanted a break and it didn’t take me long to get used to the Mediter­ranean style. Barcelona is a human-sized, beau­ti­ful and com­fort­able city, so I ended up stay­ing there.
Are you a pro­fes­sional mu­si­cian?
Not re­ally. I own a web de­sign and de­vel­op­ment com­pany, but music has al­ways been a big hobby, the thing I’m most pas­sion­ate about.
Is Barcelona a great city for music?
The sim­ple fact of Lon­don being so much big­ger means there are more small venues for many gen­res of music. In Barcelona the scene is smaller, and there are quite re­stric­tive laws about live music li­cences and noise, which is un­der­stand­able be­cause it’s a very densely packed city. But that means that the num­ber of very good live music venues isn’t that high, so there’s quite a lot of com­pe­ti­tion to play in the good venues, which have good sound, a good ca­pac­ity, and good fa­cil­i­ties, which is sur­pris­ing for some peo­ple, given the fact that Barcelona is so fa­mous for fes­ti­vals, such as Pri­mav­era Sound and Sonar. But de­spite that rep­u­ta­tion, the fact is there aren’t so many live music venues com­pared to other cities, such as Lis­bon, Berlin, or Lon­don.
You are quite a new band.
Yes, we were cre­ated a year ago, and the fact that we only play orig­i­nal ma­te­r­ial means that the ini­tial ges­ta­tion time to get to the point where you can play live is longer than if you’re just doing cov­ers. Na­talie saw Gabriel and Marc play and ap­proached them to pro­pose a joint pro­ject, and then they started look­ing for a drum­mer, and so I am the last one to join the band. We recorded our first EP for Christ­mas.
The Risk of Your Life, what’s it like in terms of style?
We are a rock’n’roll band, so the ref­er­ences are quite clear: 50s and 60s music, Gene Vin­cent, Jay Hawkins, surf rock, but I can con­fi­dently say that we don’t sound like a pas­tiche of all of these older acts. In fact, we sound like quite an up­dated kind of rock’n roll. My Dad, who’s also a mu­si­cian, calls it post-mod­ern rock­a­billy. Think of Quentin Taran­tino sound­tracks, be­cause it sounds a bit like that.
What in­spired the spy movie look of the music video?
We worked with two great di­rec­tors,  Merli Mar­lowe and Joan-Pol Ar­gen­ter, and it was their idea, but these aes­thet­ics of film noir, nou­velle vague, also emerged nat­u­rally from the fact that the music al­ready makes ref­er­ence to spy sound­tracks. The four of us were the ac­tors and we did it over one week­end in Barcelona and L’Hos­pi­talet.
You all come from dif­fer­ent mu­si­cal back­grounds. Has this in­flu­enced your style?
In­evitably. Na­talie and I are Eng­lish, Marc is Cata­lan and Gabriel, the bass player, is Brazil­ian. Var­i­ous ge­o­gra­phies and var­i­ous mu­si­cal in­flu­ences have def­i­nitely cre­ated a sound that is spe­cial to us. I come from in­flu­ences fur­ther away from the rest: more black music, black funk, Brazil­ian music... We’ve so far had good chem­istry, mu­si­cally and in­ter­per­son­ally, and there’s a good flow of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween us.
What’s your work­ing rou­tine?
We meet to re­hearse on Fri­day af­ter­noons, as we all have dif­fer­ent jobs, and Na­talie and Marc, who write the lyrics, some­times meet sep­a­rately to com­pose and share ideas.
What are the most com­mon themes in your lyrics?
Our lyrics sit be­tween spy movie themes and more con­ven­tional love song kind of nar­ra­tives. We have one which we like to think will be the next James Bond theme tune, it’s called Just An­other Good­bye.
What about fu­ture pro­jects?
We have enough songs now to do our first LP, hav­ing done the EP, and the idea is to keep tour­ing, get some more gigs, in and out­side Barcelona. Play­ing live is what moves us more than any­thing else, and doing record­ings as well. Play­ing out­doors is the best; the acoustics are dif­fer­ent of course, you can’t con­trol it as much as in a con­cert hall, but play­ing out­side in the open air is fan­tas­tic. We would love to play in Pri­mav­era Sound; we are open to of­fers!
What can the au­di­ence ex­pect from a live con­cert with The 54321s?
Our music is fun and ac­ces­si­ble, not sim­plis­tic, a good show. Na­talie is a real pres­ence, a fan­tas­tic singer, she is a power house and the cen­tre of the band and some­how this sys­tem works and we all orbit her, in a way. A good co­her­ent fun, en­er­getic live show. But come and see us and judge for your­selves and see if my bi­ased eval­u­a­tion is fair enough!

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