Saint Etienne: The Last Dance for Pop’s Time Machine
By Fred Spanner
Photography: Rob Baker Ashton
“Bands do this kind of side-eye thing when they see each other in public. I mean, I see Gaz Coombes from Supergrass in the Co Op and we talk just fine, but when you’re in a crowded room, it gets a bit weird.”
Saint Etienne, the coolest cocktail of sixties swing, clubland beats and pure pop daydreams this side of the M25, are about to bow out in style. For more than thirty years, Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have been serving up tunes that sound like the best night out you ever had, pressed onto vinyl.
From indie discos to Sunday morning comedowns, they’ve been the soundtrack to a thousand perfect moments. And now, with their swansong album on the horizon, the trio are getting ready to take one last victory lap with their final album, International. Having heard a preview of it myself, I can assure you, it’s one hell of a celebration.
I sat down to chat with Sarah to try to pick out some of her personal career highlights and to see if this really is the end…
I’ve had International on repeat all day. You don’t need me to tell you it’s up there with your best.
I was very determined that it was going to be an upbeat, up-tempo, ‘finish on a high’ kind of record. That’s what I wanted. I was quite forceful, I think. I’m not normally like that, but for this album I was at my most forceful.
We’ll talk more about the album later, but let’s take you back to the early days. Your mum was a singer and your dad was an assistant director to Stanley Kubrick, so I guess entertainment was in your blood from the start?
Yes, dad worked on a couple of Kubrick films and around four James Bonds, so I was used to meeting some quite famous people. But when you’re a kid, your norm is your norm, and I didn’t realise how big a deal these people were. It’s only when you get older that you start to think, “Oh, that was unusual!” And my mum was an actress, too.
My poor sons didn’t stand a chance. One is in a band, and the other makes film and video content. It’s a gene pool situation, and I know because I’m the result of one.
Who were your musical heroes back in the day?
Oh, Adam and the Ants. I really want to go and see Adam Ant. When The Specials brought out Ghost Town, that was a great moment. When I was really young, it was David Essex, and The Beach Boys. I think it was because I really liked hearing a record that sounded like something I’d never heard before. Something otherworldly. So when I heard Ghost Town, I was like, “This is it!”
I liked watching Althea and Donna on Top of the Pops because it was like they weren’t even trying. They were so nonchalant in their dungarees and everything. I thought they were the best.
Originally, you just came in to do one song with Saint Etienne and stayed for a very long time. Did you genuinely think it would just be the one song?
Haha, yes. Do you think I’ve overstayed my welcome? Yes, I really did think that. I hadn’t even heard Nothing Can Stop Us until I went into the studio. I was reading lyrics off the paper, and I honestly thought that was it. Then I got a call back to do another song, then another, then another…
Also, I’m quite an easy-going person. They probably thought, “Yeah, we’ll keep her around. She’s easy-going. She’s a keeper.”
Many people forget that you were the original ‘Britpop’. You were on the front cover of Select Magazine alongside Suede, Denim, The Auteurs, and Pulp, under the heading, ‘Yanks Go Home!” This was before others muscled in on the scene, of course. Were you happy to be called Britpop?
In that arena, yes, but as it went on, not so much. Britpop evolved into…well, you know what it evolved into. I mean, some of the girl-fronted bands... God, it was so dreary. I’m not going to name, names, but, you know, who I mean.
Has the songwriting process changed much over the years?
Because we’re not a guitar, drums, bass band, we don't have to all go in together. I live in Oxfordshire, Pete lives in Brighton, and Bob lives in West Yorkshire, so we’re very spread out. So we write and share ideas. On this album, we came together at a studio in Brighton with a guy called Tim Powell from Xenomania (Sugababes, Girls Aloud). The thing about Tim is that he’s fast as well as talented.
Pretty much all of the songs we turned up with at the studio were written already, so that made it easier.
Rumour has it, back in the day, you almost got the Spiller Groovejet song, before Sophie Ellis-Bextor was chosen. How factual is that?
I hate to burst that bubble, but I’m not sure that’s a real thing. My husband, our manager, says it was a real thing, but I’m not so sure. Maybe he shielded me from it because he didn’t want me to divert from Saint Etienne? Maybe I got the gig and he never told me, haha.
I also saw you in the 90s on the Shooting Stars live tour with Vic and Bob. I seem to remember Vic joking about how he’d had a Number One hit and you hadn’t, which didn’t go down too well with the audience.
He had a bit of a dig, yeah. I remember he did the thing where he rubbed his legs. I was really nervous and I wasn’t really used to the theatre scene. On top of that you didn’t know what they had planned. You were just firefighting. It ended up with me, our manager, and Bob Mortimer drinking till four in the morning in the hotel bar. Bob was adorable. I loved him.
I may not get the chance to tell you again, so I just wanted to say well done on having the second-best Christmas song of all time.
Thank you…so what’s the best?
I think I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day by Wizzard has to be at the top. I remember my dad buying the single and putting it on the record player. I think my sister and I played it as if it was Christmas every day for the next six months.
Oh, God, that’s given me goosebumps just thinking about that song. It’s making me with Christmas is a little bit nearer.
I Was Born On Christmas Day is such a classic tune. How did you get Tim Burgess involved?
I’d been in Manchester quite a bit at the time, working on my first solo record. I was in an underground bar on the main street. Weirdly, Steve Coogan was in the bar, but I didn’t know who he was. He came over to our table and said, “You’re Sarah from Saint Etienne. I really love your work” I was quite drunk, and I’m like, “Yeah?” in a kind of dismissive way. My mates said, “That was Steve Coogan!” I had no idea who he was.
Tim was in the bar, too. We were just kind of looking across at each other. Bands do this kind of side-eye thing when they see each other in public. I mean, I see Gaz Coombes from Supergrass in the Co Op and we talk just fine, but when you’re in a crowded room, it gets a bit weird.
So, Tim came over, and he was really nice. Then I saw him pretty much every day after that, and we started thinking we should probably work on something together. Bob and Pete were talking about doing a Christmas single, so I suggested we get Tim involved.
Tim- the poor sod- turned up at the studio without knowing what the words were. When he saw the lyrics, he looked really confused. All this stuff about being a tennis wife and all that. He did know it was a Christmas song, though. We just stuck him in the vocal booth and off he went. He was brilliant. And the video was so much fun.
Have your kids grown gradually understanding how big a deal Saint Etienne is?
It’s exactly that. When they were much younger, they’d just be having a laugh. They’d turn up to a festival and run around with the other kids, getting lost, going into places they shouldn’t, and generally annoying security. They just saw the whole thing as a laugh, and I don’t think they had any comprehension of what we were doing.
Now that they’re older, they’re like, “Oh, I get it now,” and because my son’s in a band, we’re starting to have chats about things like the pressure of being the singer in a band. We’ve got hours and hours of footage from being on tour, back in the day.
Foolishly, my husband decided to ask our son to digitise all of our old tour footage. He’s seen things now that I wish he hadn’t. Luckily for me, I wasn’t in a lot of it. It wasn’t that bad. Things like everyone smoking and drinking at the back of the plane on the way to Iceland. I’m surprised the plane wasn’t tilting a bit.
When we went to Iceland, we played in a venue that used to be a fishmarket, and we found a forklift truck. So everyone’s having a go driving this thing around the venue and getting chased by security. That’s the least of the bad stuff on the old videos, but there’s still got another ten hours of footage to go through…
Let’s talk about your final album, International. What a way to bow out with so many great collaborations. On Glad, you’ve got Tom from The Chemical Brothers and Jez from Doves.
I’ve known Ed and Tom from when they used to DJ in the social club, way back in the day, when they were known as The Dust Brothers. Heavenly Records is our spiritual home, and it’s kind of theirs, too. I’ve known Jez since he was about sixteen, so we were keen to reach out to people we knew to collaborate with.
As it turned out, they were thinking of collaborating too, so it was like the stars had aligned. It was the same with Paul Hartnoll of Orbital. He’d been working on something he thought would be a good fit for us as well. Nobody said, “No.”
And Confidence Man, Vince Clarke, and Nick Heyward, too! It’s a real fest of collabs.
Vince was really laid back. It seemed so easy for him. I think because he’s had such a long and illustrious career, he only does things he likes. You send him something and it comes back ‘Vince Clarke-tastic’. It’s perfect, and you can so tell it’s him. He was so easy to work with.
I’m not sure how Bob got in touch with Nick Heyward, but he said he was up for working with us. We sent him a backing track, and he wrote the words and melody. I haven’t actually met him yet, but we have texted each other. He was telling me how the song made him feel as he was sitting on the balcony at his home. It was really sweet.
I did see him at a funeral in London after we’d finished the track and I wondered if I should say hi, but I felt it probably wasn’t the right time to introduce myself properly.
It’s a brave thing to say the word ‘Final’, but is there anyone you wish you’d collaborated with over the years?
I’m always going on about J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr. I love the songs he writes; I think they’re the most beautiful, melancholy songs. I do like a bit of grunge. Not that they’re strictly grunge, of course. He shared a dressing room with us once.
They told us people would have to share dressing rooms and would be mind sharing with J Mascis. I’m like, “Oh my God!” Of course, I ruined everything by walking over to him and gushing like a really big fan. Then he upped and left, and I never saw him again.
Shall we finish up with some advice for new bands?
I always say the same thing. Always follow your heart and what you want to do. Never mould yourself towards whatever the current trend is. Stick with what you want to do, because people spot integrity. Also, don’t believe the hype and never think you’re amazing.
Saint Etienne’s final album, International, is out on 5th September.
