Interview
(Progressive Newsletter Nr.57 11/06)
excerpts from an interview with Jem Godfrey(Keyboards, Vocals)
My musical training was very limited in the traditional sense of the word. Basically my piano teacher was Tony Banks! I had 6 months of formal piano training when I was 9 and then gave up. After than I spent all my school holidays teaching myself to play Genesis songs "In the Cage", "Los Endos", "Firth Of Fifth", "Supper's Ready, "Cinema Show" and so on. By the time I was 14, I found I had taught myself enough technique to start to develop my own ideas. After that I joined the local blues band and gigged in the evenings for pocket money. By the time I was 17 I was opening for IQ at the Marquee with my brother's prog band Freefall. After a few years, the band split up and I went to work at Virgin Radio, a national radio station in the UK producing the station imaging. From there I went to work at BBC Radio 1, the biggest pop radio station in the UK. Then a chance meeting in a pub led to me and another guy starting a music company with the aim of writing pop songs. The first commercial release we had was "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten which went to Number 1 in the UK for a month and sold nearly 2,000,000 copies worldwide. After that we produced and mixed the song "Kiss Kiss" by Holly Valance which also went to number 1 in the UK. Shortly after we produced "The Tide Is High" for Atomic Kitten which spent 3 weeks at number 1 the following year. Most recently I co-wrote the X-Factor winnerıs song in the UK for Shayne Ward which went to number 1 for a month and was also the UK Christmas number 1. Then, in May, I won an Ivor Novello award for Best Selling UK Single of 2005 for the same song.
Since when do you had the idea of doing an album like "Milliontown" and how long did it take from the first idea until the finished album?
I had the idea in whilst lying in a hammock in Italy in the summer of 2004. When I got back to the studio in September, I started work on "Hyperventilate". I finished the whole thing around about May this year. But I took lots of time off in between. Had I booked a studio and done it in one go, I think it would have taken about 4 or 5 months.
How did you decide which musicians you'd like to include into Frost?
I bought a lot of prog albums at the start when I was doing my research, John Mitchell cropped up a lot. I was really into his guitar playing after that so I just emailed him and asked him if he'd like to play on the album. He heard the rough tracks, liked them and agreed to play on it. John M suggested John Jowitt would be a good choice for bass duties, John J then suggested Andy Edwards.
Even though you have written and produced the music on "Milliontown", in which way did the others influence the music?
I just let them play what they felt like playing, John Mitchell's playing was honed out of improvising. He just played bits over and over again until a sort of melodic structure started to appear. It didn't take very long though. With the drums there was a little bit more direction from me, but when we get out live I think Andy will make it his own.
Where do you see the biggest differences between producing / arranging pop music and progressive rock?
Obviously the song lengths are a bit different, I'm not sure what the A+R men in the pop universe would make of a 26 minute long song for Britney! With pop, you have to be very precise. You've got just over 3 minutes to tell a story, fill it with great melodies, give the singer a chance to shine and then you get the hell out. It's quite tough sometimes. With prog there's none of that time pressure song-wise. That's the biggest difference. The rest is actually pretty similar.
Do you see Frost more as a project with changing musicians or is it more a band with the same line-up for further activities?
I hope it stays the same, I don't have any plans to work with anyone else currently.
What can we expect from Frost on stage in autumn and what further plans are in the pipeline?
I hope we will be good and loud onstage. As for further plans, I'm already writing the second album and we hope for it to be out in September 07. Fingers crossed...
Kristian Selm © Progressive Newsletter 2006