Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs caught up with The Evening Show with Dan O'Connell on Radio X.
Speaking to Radio X’s Dan O’Connell at Brighton’s On The Beach festival over the weekend, Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson admitted that the band were ‘too tired to compute’ the critical and commercial success of their debut album Employment, as he reflected on 20 years since the album was released.
Rick Wilson – RW
Dan O’Connell – DOC
DOC: “Employment has sold over three million copies and earned the band three BRIT Awards, including the award for ‘Best British Group.’ It also received an NME Award for ‘Best Album,’ and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize.”
RW: “Shortlisted. I think we came second.”
DOC: “But it was still an incredibly well received album. Did you have the value in yourself to enjoy that at the time?”
RW: “No, definitely not. No. It was weird. We knew it was going really well; you can't really compute it when you're so tired. And I think any new band who aren't feeling like on the verge of death with tiredness, you're not doing it properly!”
DOC: “Yeah.”
RW: “But it was happening, and it was good, and we were enjoying it. But we never got the chance to step back and go, ‘This is fantastic, this is everything we've ever dreamed of!’ And it was everything we've ever dreamed of. But it was just a very odd time for us, very odd. I'd do it again exactly the same. I'd do everything again exactly the same.”
DOC: “So there aren't regrets?”
RW: “Yeah, but they're the good bits though. The thing is, bands that everything goes really well, then just to suddenly disappear. But bands that go up and down have a need to fight back all the time. It's weird, because we're very happy being the underdogs. We like it. It's that we're most comfortable when things are going wrong, even like when we were the Glastonbury and it was, like, my favourite show ever. Best day. I loved it. The crowd turned up. There was like 100,000 people in the field. Amazing. And then they said it wasn't on iPlayer. And I was like, ‘Well, that's really rubbish.’ But I'm glad something terrible happened, because it wouldn't be the Kaiser Chiefs if it all went to plan.”
