INTERVIEW: MARK ARM – THE SAINTS ’73-’78, August 2024

INTERVIEW: MARK ARM – THE SAINTS ’73-’78, August 2024
By Shane Pinnegar

Founding members Ed Kuepper and Ivor Hays have hit the road around Australia the celebrate the pivotal first era of The Saints. Calling themselves The Saints ’73-’78, Kuepper and Hays have recruited Sunnyboy Peter Oxley, Bad Seed Mick Harvey, and Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm on vocals.

It’s a line-up which makes perfect sense, and after the initial announcement back in July, I placed a Zoom call to Arm in Seatle to discuss his place in this exciting union.

I guess the first question for me, Mark – the most obvious question, is what did The Saints mean to you? Were they influential as you were growing up and starting bands?

Yes. You know, they were kind of among the first sort of, like, discoveries in the early 80’s for me. I missed the time that everyone was talking about them, when they first came out, so it’s just like – ‘what’s that? That looks like it could be cool, I’ll check it out.’ They were, at the time, this is a couple of years after they were initially released in The States on Sire, I think. It was weird – there’d be a lot of records that wouldn’t be widely available, or were totally gone. The first two MC5 records were totally gone, The Stooges – but Raw Power was available. It was a different label, and it was like a nice price kind of thing and that was sort of the same thing with the Saints at that point. Like I don’t know if [The Saints] ever really toured the states.

Yeah, I’m not sure I had no idea that they were even that well known, certainly in the early days.

Yeah. I mean, I think they were probably better known in the UK, right?

Hmm. Yeah, from what I understand. Yeah. Because it was just a little bit before my time. ’77 – I would have been 11, so I wasn’t quite there yet. The band had that very DIY approach. I mean they set up their own label to release their first single and they did everything by themselves. And then they went to England because they weren’t getting any traction here. Was that whole DIY approach a similar thing to Mudhoney and the other early grunge bands, and what you guys did in Seattle?

No, we had a network of people who supported us. [laughs] You know, we had friends who were starting a record label. We were not just like, pounding our heads against the wall, going like, ‘please listen to us.’ I mean, I don’t think – obviously they weren’t, like, tap dancing for attention in the way like, ‘we’re going to play whatever music you want to hear.’ They had their own thing, and they were totally different to what was happening in pop culture at the time, and they were just forging ahead under their own steam and against all odds. And it probably surprised them more than anything else that people in the UK responded to it, you know, when they sent out that first single. Like, I mean it must have been a shock to get, like, that respose.

Absolutely. And it certainly captured a certain zeitgeist, didn’t it? Just lightning in a bottle of that exact moment. You listen to it now, and it sounds like ’76/‘77.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Magic.

Well, I mean, that’s because it was [‘77]. [laughs] But it doesn’t sound like it’s locked into ‘77 to me. Like, Nights In Venice is a sprawling, weird tune that’s not just like a 2 1/2 minute punk rock assault.

I believe you didn’t know Ed Kuepper before you got the call. I mean, what made him, do you think, out of all the people he could have asked, what made him give you a buzz?

I don’t know for sure… but a friend of mine – Dave Butterworth – who was in the Double Agents, lives in Melbourne. He’s tour managed Ed before, has worked with Tim Pittman and I think that might have come up in a conversation – but I don’t know for sure. You’d have to ask these guys. [laughs]

Was it a surprise to you?

Yes. Very much so. I had no idea. I mean, I knew that there was a Saints box set coming together ‘cos my friend Larry Hardy is releasing it in the US… but yeah… [laughs]

When he did ask was it was it a simple matter of ‘do you want to do this? Yeah, sure.’ Or was there a bit more conversation involved?

I was approached by Tim, and you know, it was just like the idea was floated. I thought about it for a hot minute, and you know, it’s like, ‘how much work is that going to be? It’s going to be a lot of work. Am I up for it? Do I have time to get it down? I believe I do, sure.’ [laughs]

Well, how do you start preparing for something like this when you’re half the world away?

Initially I was just listening to the records over and over and over again. I’m just, like, totally absorbing the lyrics and the song. So I just kind of went through and initially tried to decipher the lyrics myself [chuckles]… and that was somewhat difficult. I found some lyrics online, but they’re clearly not all there. You know, like that phrase doesn’t make any sense, and luckily, Eternally Yours and Prehistoric Sounds come with lyric sheets so I could kind of compare those two sources – the lyric sheets and what’s online – to what I’m actually hearing and then kind of divine what might actually be said [laughs] – because they don’t really [always] match up with the lyric sheets either!

When it comes to rehearsals, have you started, like, getting on Zoom and doing something via that or are you pretty much just working on your own part at the moment?

No, I’m just kind of methodically going through it and, like, learning one song at a time. My commute is short. It’s like 10 to 15 minutes, you know, I’ll just have [the song] cranked as loud as possible and vocalise along with it, and when I feel like I’m pretty comfortable with one song, I’ll move on to the next one and then when I feel comfortable with that, I’ll go back to the beginning and just kind of like build on that so I don’t forget the things that I’ve thought I learned earlier.

And is the goal to be pretty faithful to the original recordings?

Well, I’m not sure how Ed is playing them now, you know, but that’s all I’ve got to go by.

I did read one interview from a few weeks ago where he said that he’s been playing them differently for years because he didn’t want to replicate The Saints, but now this is going to be going more back to the original sounds, I think.

Yeah, I had a couple of emails with them and that that was sort of the impression that I got. I’m super thankful for that, because that’s all I’ve got to go on!

Well, exactly. It doesn’t seem like you’ve been given direction in any different way, right? Might be a bit of a shock if you’re doing acoustic unplugged versions when you get there. So you’ve got a couple of months up your sleeve to organise and everything. Are you pretty confident that you will have it down?

I think so. The songs came through, like, here’s the songs that we’re doing, kind of backwards. Prehistoric Sounds songs were first, then Eternally Yours, and then the I’m Stranded songs. So I’m just kind of working in that direction. And I’m feeling really good about the Prehistoric Sounds songs, I’m just starting to get into the Eternally Yours songs.

I mean, it’s a lot of music to know, right? A whole show’s worth –

Yeah. I mean, I haven’t been told to, like, learn every song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get you. But still, it’s, you know, it’s a minimum of 90 minutes.

But then it’s a good chunk, and some of those songs had a lot of fucking words. Some of them are pretty simple. Some of them are just, like, what the… why does he keep going?

Well, look, if you can memorise them all, mate, you’re doing better than me. At my age, I’d need a teleprompter or something, or I’d just make my own lyrics up left, right and centre.

Yeah. I think I’ll have it.

That’s excellent. It’s unusual to think of a band who have announced a tour before they’ve even got in the same room…

Right. I mean, I think everyone’s gotten together except for me.

And they’re all old friends as well, but is there any trepidation on your part that you might get there and then maybe not get along with someone, not gel with them musically or personally or something?

I am not thinking about that and please don’t put those seeds in my head! [laughs]

I’ll never mention it again! As a rock legend in your own right, have you ever been tapped to do anything like this before or is this quite an unusual situation?

I did. I toured with the remaining members of the MC5 in 2004 and ‘05. We didn’t get to Perth, but we did get to Australia.

Ahhh, that’ll be why I don’t remember that…

And that was super cool. That was a huge learning experience for me because I’ve pretty much just only played in one band, you know, coming up with things and like how we write songs and stuff, and I just felt like I really kind of learned a lot by doing that. And then there’s been like a couple of other, you know, like kind of one off, cover type things – like The Sonics and The Stooges – pretty obvious stuff for me.

As a singer, when you’re approaching someone else’s stuff, do you go into it going, ‘well, I’m Mark Arm, I’m gonna sing it my way.’ Or is it, I guess, almost similar to an actor in that you find the truth in the role or the truth in the song and try to approach it from that sort of angle? I mean, obviously you don’t want to just copy Chris Bailey.

I’m taking my cues from the recordings. I’m not going to, like, scream my way through the songs. I don’t think that would be cool. You know, I’m trying to keep that snotty attitude – the sort of, ‘we don’t give a fuck’ approach to it, you know. I want to be true to the thing.

Yeah. As a long-time fan it must be pretty awesome, the prospect of playing with not one but two members of the original band – plus also Mick Harvey of the Bad Seeds and The Birthday Party.

For sure, and Peter Oxley from Sunnyboys.

Yeah, I mean, fantastic stuff. So were these bands very cult in America?

Yes.

Sort of underground?

I think for sure the biggest impact would have been The Bad Seeds, but that’s still an underground band, you know. Red Right Hand got used in movies a lot, but it’s not like there was any danger of mainstream appeal. [laughs]

Yeah, yeah, sure. I get you. It wasn’t unexpected, but there was a little bit of backlash from Chris Bailey’s estate saying that they should have been consulted. One statement I read said that they thought YOU should have consulted them. Personally, I’m struggling to understand how they thought that was appropriate?

Me too! That was a really confusing thing. There was kind of an angry email sent to a random person at Sub Pop – they didn’t even reach out to me. You know, that went to our A&R guy, who sent it to me. It was just like, that’s really weird. I don’t feel like I need to wade into those waters. I would assume that Tim and Ed and Ivor have… [thoughtful pause]… done the appropriate things, you know. I don’t think anyone’s like trying to screw over Chris Bailey or Chris Bailey’s estate.

No, exactly. I agree with you, completely. I think that Ed’s response was very appropriate, in that it just doesn’t seem like it’s even a thing. It’s just someone stamping their feet a little bit, bless their little cotton socks. Move on, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You said you got the set list pretty much – was there anything not on there that you particularly wanted to see on there? Any particular favourites?

There are a couple of songs that if I have time and wherewithal, and the mental capacity, I will try to learn them and go like, hey, I know these ones too, sure.

Yeah, cool. Well, it’s gonna be great. I mean, I can’t wait personally to see the band. I was trying to think about – it must have been a surprise for you to get asked, but like, I couldn’t really think of anyone else they could have approached for it, that that might have done justice to it.

That’s crazy and super flattering.

Yeah – I don’t know if I would have thought of the pairing BEFORE it was announced, but as soon as I heard it, it made perfect sense.

Right, right, right. That’s fucking awesome.

Can’t wait, Mark.

Neither can I. But actually I need the time to make it happen. [laughs]

THE SAINTS ’73-‘78 AUSTRALIA 2024

Wed 13th: Adelaide Hindley St. Music Hall special guests The Double Agents
Friday 15th: Castlemaine Theatre Royal (SOLD OUT) special guests Parsnip
Saturday 16th: Melbourne Northcote Theatre (SOLD OUT) special guests The Double Agents
Sunday 17th: Melbourne Northcote Theatre special guests Alien Nosejob
Wednesday 20th: Fremantle Freo Social special guests Chimers
Friday 22nd: Sydney, Enmore Theatre (SOLD OUT) special guests Kim Salmon & The Surrealists
Saturday 23rd: Brisbane, Princess Theatre (SOLD OUT) special guests Chimers
Sunday 24th: Brisbane, Princess Theatre (SOLD OUT) special guests Chimers
Monday 25th: Brisbane, Princess Theatre special guests Chimers
Wednesday 27th: Hobert, Odeon Theatre special guests Liquid Nails
Friday 29th: Thirroul, Anitas Theatre
Saturday 30th: Byron Bay, The Green Room

Category: Interviews