Cormac Neeson tells BRIAN BOYDthe secret of The Answer's success: gigging, gigging and more gigging
LAST WEEK they had the second biggest album sales in the UK (behind U2). This week they're on the cover of Kerrang!They're currently playing to audiences of 20,000 and upwards every night. They're all over Guitar Heroand, after a recent appearance on Dave Letterman's show, the host said they were "single-handedly keeping rock'n'roll alive".
Also, they’re Irish – but no one has ever heard of them.
Welcome, please, The Answer, a hard-rocking quartet from Newcastle, Co Down who are currently the opening act on AC/DC's world tour and selling considerable amounts of their second album, Everyday Demons. (Their first album, Risesold 100,000 copies.)
There’s no gimmick here. The Answer weren’t selected by a phone poll on some reality TV show. They haven’t got major label support to “push” them into the charts. There’s been no promotional trickery behind their ascent. Rather quaintly, they’ve come up the old-school way.
“We feel like we’re some sort of 1970s band who have built up their audience through gigging, gigging and more gigging,” says front man Cormac Neeson. “In a way, what we’re doing now is what AC/DC did when they when started – building up an audience slowly, without having to have an instant hit with our first release. No one in Ireland, or anywhere else for that matter, really knew we had done 100,000 copies of our first album, and now this one has broken the top 20 of the UK album charts and looks like being a lot bigger.”
The Answer are a sleeves-up, heads down, no-nonsense hard-rock band, the type that are supposed to be out of fashion in these designer indie/flamboyant r’n’b musical times. But peers who know and like this kind of music are falling over themselves to praise their sound. The Answer have also toured with Whitesnake, The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple. It helped a small bit that the band members went to the same school as Ash.
"We would have been a few years behind them," says Neeson. "But I remember when they were on Top of the Popsand selling loads of records and what a deep impression that made on us – that someone local could get so far. Our drummer even used to drum with them when the parents of Ash's drummer made him stay and do his exams while the band were out on tour. They were a great source of help to us when it came to finding out who to send our demo tapes to and what we should be looking out for when signing a record deal."
Their careers were kick-started when the right demo landed in the right hands.
“We had sent a tape off to BBC radio’s Steve Lamacq. The person who is now our manager was sleeping on his floor at time. Steve handed him our demo tape thinking he might like it. The next day he came over to see us play in Belfast and we did a deal after the gig.
“Then it was a case of getting a label. We had a few big offers from some major labels, but there was this indie called Albert Productions who told us how they didn’t expect an immediate hit, how they were interested in growing us as a band and that did it for us.”
The Answer have already played 42 AC/DC shows in North America and are now on the European leg, with a whole bunch of 90,000-people outdoor festival shows to follow shortly.
“It’s an amazing learning experience,” says Neeson. “When we first started in 2000 we were really struggling to get anybody to our early gigs in Belfast. Making an inroad into the Northern Irish music scene is a very difficult thing to do. But we’re not just doing the AC/DC tour at the moment. Whenever there’s a day off we fit in our own gigs, so it’s all pretty non-stop.”
While the band’s musical style does doff a cap to the likes of Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy, they have a fresh take on the genre. “There’s four different musical tastes in the band. The influences range from Rage Against the Machine and Smashing Pumpkins to Helmet, Tool, Therapy? and Kerbdog. There’s also a bit of 1980s hair metal, and some blues and classic rock in there too.
“We have a sincere love for the passion and emotion of hard rock. I think the first album was more hard rock than this one. Now it’s a bit more introspective and a bit darker. I write from almost exclusively personal experiences, issues that really get under my skin and make me angry and piss me off. These are songs about people I’ve met, people I’ve loved or hated, and there’s a fair few not very desirable experiences in there too.”
The Answer are perhaps the first Northern Irish band not to have to deal with questions about the Troubles – or quasi-political probings about where their affiliations lay. [This interview took place before the recent fatal shootings in Northern Ireland]
“That’s a real bonus,” says Neeson. “But then, at the same time, whenever I return to Belfast one of the first things I see on the way in from the airport is a big piece of graffiti which says ‘Prepare For Peace, Ready For War’, so it’s there somewhere in the background still. And you still get asked the odd silly question about the Troubles.”
Potentially one of the biggest step-ups the band may receive is from the Guitar Heromusic video game, which has sold 23 million copies to date and become a worldwide gaming phenomenon.
"They aren't really known for taking on new bands, but they're using a song from our first album, Never Too Late, on their new game. The great thing is that it exposes us to people who normally wouldn't be into our genre of music or come to see us play. They're also using us as the background music for their advertisement, and I think there's some sort of competition being lined up with us at a later date, so it all really helps."
Perhaps the only thing getting in the way of the irresistible rise of The Answer are rumours, which began on a French web site, about Cormac Neeson being considered as Robert Plant’s replacement in a reformed Led Zeppelin.
** Everyday Demonsis out now.
** The Answer support AC/DC at the O2 on April 18th
