Crispian Mills of Kula Shaker opens up about new music, upcoming shows, spirituality and creativity in an interview with Dom Smith.
Crispian on his relationship with success…
“I think supporting a family is one of those measurements of how effective you’re being. To be absolutely honest, it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle to look after your family, and every musician I know is having to make massive compromises in terms of how much time they spend at home versus going away. In terms of success, I think that the moment of the show, the moment of connecting with the audience… that is the measure of success, really, for me. That’s where it’s real, and where I know we are connecting with people, and creating music, and creating good vibes. That is the moment. Everything else, really, is very abstract.”
Defining legacy…
“Maybe I should start thinking in terms of legacy. I’m hearing the word legacy used a lot in terms of the media, actually. I’m hearing that you’ve got the 1% and you’ve got the 99%. The 1% who have all the muscle in terms of the international reach, the BBC, or Fox News. And then you’ve got this massive new landscape of independent media, independent music journalism, independent fan communities, independent news, and actually, that’s the future. So, I would definitely, in terms of legacy, I would align ourselves with the future, rather than the past, because then, people are there for the right reasons, I think. If you look back at the sort-of golden age of popular music, it was driven by musicians, it was driven by music fans, and then this thing happened from the mid-70s onwards, where it was so corporate, and even the great magazines, like the NME, they were just owned by corporations. They stopped being about music, they started becoming sort-of tabloids. Musicians too… it all became corporate. So I think it’s returning back to a more people-based, fan-based approach, and that’s good. That’s where we want to be. It’s so cool that we’re all middle-aged now, but we’ve become indie artists again. It’s really cool, and we’re happy here.”
Crispian on how it feels for Kula Shaker to be releasing new music and to be touring soon…
“There’s two things. Coming through COVID mania, coming through the lockdowns, and the trauma that everyone went through. I think that when we came out of that with ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love’, that was pretty bold, in terms of ‘free hugs’. We felt a real sense of timing, and Kula Shaker being a good band to be part of for these times. And then, reconnecting with Jay (our organ player). We’d had a hiatus, he’d gone off and got this gig with Oasis, and that was his bread and butter. We weren’t really sure if we’d ever play with Jay again. When he came back, that was a massive lease of life. So it does sort-of feel like we’ve come full circle, and the band’s been reborn in the 21st century. Making music is pretty exciting.”
Time management and feeling creatively fulfilled…
“The type of work that I do is silly work. It’s high risk, it’s high-stakes gambling, and it’s crazy. I think that was something I realised as a kid growing up. A lot of the people that I saw around my family, people who are very respected, like Richard Attenborough. I knew him because he was a friend of my grandfather’s, and they were just gamblers. They were obsessed with what they did, obsessed with film. He was obsessed with making film, he was obsessed with the story of Gandhi. For like 20 years, he was trying to make that film, nobody would give him the money, and he was gambling, and he was collecting paintings and selling them, and his family didn’t know what was going on. They were addicted… addicted to what they did. I think he realised that to do this sort of work, you’ve got to be really obsessed, to almost an unhealthy point. You just hope your family are going to be understanding. There’s a rough side to it, which is the lack of security, but I don’t know anybody who has a secure job anymore. Everybody’s looking over their shoulder… everybody’s insecure. Maybe everything’s just sort-of levelled out now.”
Creative flow and getting consumed in creativity…
“It’s a cliche to say the creative arts. Everything is creative, life is creative. If you’re doing what you’re good at, if you’ve found your gift – whether it’s talking to people, cooking, or gardening, or teaching – you are spontaneous in the way that you’re living your life. You know, if it’s just flowing, you’re doing the right thing, you’re in the right place… that is creative life. Music is just a very obvious example of it. But when you’re really good at what you do, and you’re able to be spontaneous, you do become obsessed, and you get up early in the morning because you love it, and you forget to eat. I get such a hard time from my wife for not eating.”
Crispian on his own development since the beginning of his career…
“I’m still a working progress. I think I really, really am. But if there’s one thing that everybody is dealing with, it’s self-acceptance. When you just kind of look at yourself, and you go, “You’re alright. You’re okay,”… it really cuts down all the chatter, and simplifies things incredibly. There’s only so much nonsense you’re going to take from other people, as well, when you start. They talk about self-love, which sounds a bit unhealthy. Love is also care, if you can care about yourself like you would your own kid. With a kid you would say, “You’ve got to look after yourself. You’ve got to take care of yourself.” If you can actually practise that, it’s a healthy place, and it allows you to have good relationships with other people. The people who don’t care about you, you’re able to just make a cut, and recognise them. I think who we have relationships with is a really important part of us being healthy, and so for me, my creative life is pretty much the same as it was. I’ve just changed how I am with myself and other people… and that’s the work in progress.”
Self-care and looking after yourself on tour…
“You’ve got to learn how to compartmentalise your life a little bit. When you come home and you spend time with your family, you’ve got to somehow be able to have a separate kind of head. Like Worzel Gymmidge, you’ve got to put a different head on. For me, like I said, when I go on stage, that’s a different life to when I’m helping organise the tour, and then obviously when I come home, being that person. So there’s lots of different sides to your character. You’ve got to sort of harmonise them, and not go completely insane, which is always the struggle.”
A message to the fans…
“I don’t know what to say other than, you’re nothing without your audience. You’re nothing. And that’s why when we play a show, we play every show like our life depends on it. Every single show is potentially the make-or-break moment, and the show really is all about that congregational exchange. That’s why we called that last album, before Natural Magick, the ‘1st congregation’. It was partly a joke, because it’s so long, that title, no one can remember it. All they can remember is that they can’t remember it. But, it’s true, that’s what it’s all about. The band is nothing without the audience. You wouldn’t have had The Beetles without beatlemania. They help to define it and shape it – it’s a two-way exchange.”
Final notes…
“The life of music, now, is about high output, and keeping producing music, and keeping it coming out, and it pushes a band to stay prolific, and productive, and creative. So, we’ve got this double A-side single, ‘Rational Man / Bringing it Back Home’, coming out at the same time as a tour, playing live music with a new record. We’re plugging the fact that everything is restored to life and creative again. When we play ‘Tattva’, and ‘Govinda’, and the songs that we’ve been playing for years, they don’t feel old actually, they feel just as fresh as the new stuff. So it’s a really good place to be, and as challenging as it is being independent, there’s an energy to it that keeps you going.”
